Review: “The Floating Girls: A Documentary” by Damien Angelica Walters

5 of 5 stars.

This moving faux documentary script stealthily builds and cuts deep. On the night of August 02, 2002, allegedly 300,000 girls between the ages of 11 and 17 disappeared all over the globe. Witnesses, including the documentarian, saw the individual girls rising up into the air until they could be seen no more and never again.

The denials and discredits start immediately. The police label the missing as runaways if they list them at all. Grainy photos, and captured video footage is questioned and then buried. It’s as if the girls never existed.

300,000 young women–adult in body, pre-adult in mind–allowed to drift away unseen, unheard, unquestioned. The fable turns grim as the veneer of allegory is lifted. What did the witnesses do as they watched the girls float away? What didn’t they do? Did they even notice?

Or maybe it asks, What would you do?

In the real world, 100+ girls disappear in Nigeria. Three young women emerge from a suburban Ohio basement having been held for over a decade. Maybe we only wish fiction was stranger than truth, and an escapism. Sometimes fiction wakes us up. This powerful tale is highly recommended.

“The Floating Girls: A Documentary” appears in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2015 edited by Paula Guran and published by Prime Books. It first appeared in Jamais Vu Issue Three, September 2014.
 
 
 
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