There is a single scene that snaps the story into focus and it happens late, when Amanda Knox steps back into ordinary American life and cannot stop noticing that she can walk from one room to the next without permission [1]. The refrigerator looks endless and free and she is almost startled by the normalcy and the basic comforts that used to be invisible, and the moment has a quiet charge that the series often chases and too rarely finds [1].
Why it lands
That passage is staged with a little more imagination than what surrounds it, letting the visual language do what the narration and repeated dramatic beats keep explaining at length [1]. For a series that can be wordy and rigid, this is one of the few times it lets meaning arrive through how it looks and feels, not just what it says [1].
What the show still misses
Even with that clarity, the series mostly circles well known ground and does not reveal much that seasoned followers of this case or viewers of the earlier Netflix film have not already seen or considered [1]. Other critics have noted the same tonal gap, where the show gestures toward a deeper portrait of a complicated figure yet does not quite reach her interior in a sustained way [2].
The unsettling question
There is a line from the earlier documentary that never stopped echoing because it distills the pull of this story into a sharp and uncomfortable thought: either she is a psychopath wearing a disguise or she is simply you [1]. It is the binary that frightens people because both possibilities are disturbing and because the wrong choice by a system can upend an ordinary life just like that [1].
Back to Perugia
The series revisits the morning in Perugia when Knox comes home after a night with her boyfriend and notices small wrong things before larger truths break open [1]. The blood in the bathroom, the unsettled detail in the toilet, the locked door, and the slow collective realization all build like an accident in slow motion, even though the audience already knows what lies behind the door [1].
A strong start fades
The early hours feel measured and intriguing, and the final stretch uncovers angles that invite reflection, but the middle moves like a checklist of familiar moves in a familiar genre [1]. It slips into the expected beats of over eager prosecutor, punishing interrogations, and media frenzy around a young woman who becomes a headline identity rather than a person with a whole story [1].
Too narrow a lens
One full episode makes space for Raffaele Sollecito, offering his background and a sense of what he endured, and that detour hints at what a broader lens might have achieved [1]. The main narrative remains tightly fixed on Knox, and while that attention is understandable, a more layered tapestry would have deepened the meaning and the cost for everyone involved [1].
What we do not see enough
The story might have breathed differently with a fuller portrait of Meredith Kercher, not only as a victim but as a friend and person whose presence should be felt beyond a case file [1]. Rudy Guede and Patrick Lumumba appear as figures moved by the investigation and by pressure, yet their dimensions are sketched when they could be drawn with more depth and care [1].
The weight of obsession
The show is eager to prove that institutions and onlookers became fixated on proving Knox did a crime she did not commit, and ironically that focus can mirror the very obsession it criticizes [1]. When the camera keeps circling the same magnet, it risks repeating the surface rather than finding the currents underneath and around it [1].
The performances that hold
Grace Van Patten gives the story a steady pulse, moving from bright curiosity to shell shocked composure and then to something more grounded and worn that still refuses to crumble [1]. Her work is the anchor and she finds small gestures that feel lived in, while Sharon Horgan brings a worried heat to the role of a mother trying not to break in public [1].
The man across the aisle
Francesco Acquaroli plays the prosecutor with a conviction that tightens as the case builds and then loosens at the edges when the realization dawns that the narrative he championed is not the truth [1]. In the finale he is strongest, facing the damage that can be done when protecting the memory of one life leads to the slow unmaking of another [1].
The true crime drumbeat
True crime keeps marching forward with new tellings of old stories, and this series is candidly part of that wave despite its claims of a fresh angle [3]. It works best when it pushes past the familiar headlines and tries to understand not just what happened but how meaning is made by press, prosecutors, and people watching from their couches [3].
What makes this case linger
Part of the lasting fascination is that Amanda Knox was a normal student in a new place, which means her situation can read as a caution about chance and power rather than a fable about evil [1]. The nightmare she lived is not just the prison or the courtroom but the feeling that the narrative seized control and turned a person into an idea, and the series shows glimpses of that trap [1].
A question of insight
One of the broader critiques is that the show does not consistently enter Knox’s inner life with the nuance the subject requires, even though she is an executive producer on the project [2][4]. The episodes sometimes tell us what to feel instead of revealing how it feels, and the distance between those two approaches is the difference between empathy and instruction [2].
When craft meets purpose
There is a worthy public good in retelling a wrongful conviction story because it might change the next interrogation, the next charging decision, or the next round of breathless coverage [1]. But the social value of that reminder does not let the art off the hook, and the show has to deliver more than a civics lesson to earn its place in a crowded field [1].
The look and the sound
When the direction imagines Knox’s disorientation through space and sound, the series finds a fresh frame that carries feeling without needing to underline every point [1]. The narration and repeated dramatic set pieces sometimes dull that edge, which is why that late kitchen sequence lingers longer than many louder scenes [1].
The middle that sags
The center episodes revert to the genre’s most familiar grammar and move through scene types that audiences can predict almost beat for beat [1]. That predictability flattens momentum and turns several sequences into recitations of precedent rather than acts of discovery [1].
The cost of narrowing
Focusing so tightly on Knox can obscure the textures around her, including the life of Meredith Kercher and the community that was shaken in tangible and intimate ways [1]. The story of a wrongful conviction is also the story of relationships, neighborhoods, courtrooms, and newsrooms, and the show is at its best when it hints at that wider web [1].
The cast that carries
Van Patten’s steady control helps knit the timeline together as the series jumps from early innocence to later resilience, while Horgan gives the family thread some sting and sincerity [1]. Acquaroli’s prosecutor never plays as a cartoon and is more affecting when the script lets him sit with contradiction and with the painful accounting of what a crusade can break [1].
The facts of release
This is an eight part Hulu limited series with a weekly rollout after the first two chapters premiered together, which gives viewers time to argue and absorb between episodes [5]. Grace Van Patten leads the ensemble with Sharon Horgan and Giuseppe De Domenico among the primary players, and Amanda Knox herself is part of the creative team behind the camera [5][4].
The long shadow of headlines
When the narrative seems satisfied to relive the media circus, it risks becoming a reflection of the very spectacle that it means to question [1]. The few times it looks away from the noise and toward the human aftershock, it feels closer to something specific and true [1].
What better could look like
A more expansive approach might have threaded Meredith’s life through the episodes with care, given Rudy Guede more than a single dimension, and lingered with Patrick Lumumba beyond plot function [1]. Those choices could have made the ethical stakes less abstract and the emotional stakes more undeniable [1].
A story still argued
The conversation around Knox has always been as much about the stories people tell as it is about the facts, and that is part of why this show exists at all [1]. The idea that a narrative can trap someone is unsettling and the series understands that in flashes, if not always in full [1].
Past the headlines
Variety’s take noted that the show is most effective when it pushes beyond what everyone already knows, and that observation fits the experience of watching the best sequences here [3]. When it lets the camera carry memory and lets silence stand in for speeches, the craft rises and the argument sharpens [3].
The producers and their stake
It matters that Knox is a guiding voice and that public figures like Monica Lewinsky also support the project creatively, since the series aims to critique cycles of scandal and media fixation [4]. That context raises expectations for insight and makes the thin stretches feel thinner when they show up [4].
The needle it tries to thread
Telling a wrongful conviction story means balancing empathy and rigor, outrage and restraint, and the show sometimes leans so hard on outrage that texture goes missing [3]. It is not an easy needle to thread, but the best moments prove it is possible inside this material and with this cast [3].
The memory of a kitchen
The image of a young woman pausing in front of a refrigerator in her own home and feeling the shock of liberty should not be as striking as it is, and yet it is [1]. That plain domestic space becomes a stage for the return of ordinary choices after extraordinary control, and the series finally listens to the quiet [1].
What it teaches anyway
Even if the show feels familiar, it may still give one investigator or prosecutor pause when a frightened twenty year old sits down at a table under bright lights [1]. If that moment of pause happens, if that next case is handled with more care, then the series has done a necessary thing even if it did not do a great one [1].
Final thought
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is a compelling watch in pieces, with performances that deserve attention and craft choices that occasionally sing, but it does not consistently open the door to the rooms we have not seen [1][3]. It wants to move past the myth and into the person and, at its strongest, it gets close enough to remind us that the difference matters more than any headline ever will [1][2].
Sources
[1] The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox movie review (2025) | Roger Ebert https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-twisted-tale-of-amanda-knox-hulu-tv-review-2025
[2] ‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox’ Has One Big Problem | TIME https://time.com/7310832/the-twisted-tale-of-amanda-knox-review/
[3] ‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox’ Review: Effective, Could Go … https://variety.com/2025/tv/reviews/the-twisted-tale-of-amanda-knox-review-hulu-1236492015/
[4] ‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox’ Review: Hulu’s True-Crime … https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/the-twisted-tale-of-amanda-knox-review-hulu-monica-lewinsky-1236344698/
[5] The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twisted_Tale_of_Amanda_Knox
[6] The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox: Limited Series – Rotten Tomatoes https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_twisted_tale_of_amanda_knox/s01
[7] The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox (TV Mini Series 2025) – IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31613279/
[8] Amanda Knox And Grace Van Patten Spoke Often While … https://www.forbes.com/sites/danafeldman/2025/08/20/amanda-knox-and-grace-van-patten-spoke-often-while-filming-hulu-series/
[9] The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox (TV Mini Series 2025) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31613279/fullcredits/
[10] Know the Cast: ‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox’ https://vaguevisages.com/2025/08/29/the-twisted-tale-of-amanda-knox-cast-hulu-characters/
