“No one has anything better to do than talk about other people. Like, even parents.” A mysterious, vindictive texter blows up a high school group chat and launches the hunt for a stalker in Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, a Netflix documentary from director Skye Borgman (Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser). In a small town like Beal City, Mich., the high school is even smaller, and everybody knows everybody else’s business. But the texts a 13-year-old and her boyfriend were receiving were so personal, so ugly, the search for the texter’s identity involved parents, police, and eventually the FBI.
The Gist: In October 2020, Lauryn Licari and her boyfriend, Owen McKenny, both students at Beal City High, began to receive texts from an unknown number. The messages were chiding, pushy – “Owen is breaking up with you; it’s obvious he wants me” – and knew close details about the kids’ lives. Lauryn’s nickname, their respective practice schedules, what they talked about in class. Then the texts got meaner. “Trash bitch,” “No one want see ur anorexic flat ass.” (A disclaimer at the doc’s outset says all of the text messages it shows – and it’s a lot – are fully real.) Lauryn and Owen, who everyone at Beal High called “The Golden Couple,” were determined to ID their personal XOXO. “We were making a list of what group it could be.”
So was it all just an outgrowth of gossip? Was it “cyberbullying,” a phrase said so often on local news that the doc features it in supercuts? When the texts began to reference shocking sexual material – keep in mind these kids were 13 – it only got worse. But after 13 months, when texts encouraging suicide began, Lauryn and Own sought the help of parents and authorities.
Lauryn, Owen, and their classmates, Sophie, Macy, and Khloe, are all interviewed in Unknown Number, as are Lauryn’s parents, Kendra Licari and Shawn Licari, Owen’s mom Jill McKenny, and other sets of parents, particularly as the investigation into the texts grows. The school superintendent and principal get involved. (Their interviews are plagued by what can only be termed “Administrator Speak.” Jill McKenny says “I don’t think the school handled things well.”) Then it gets tossed to Mike Main, the local sheriff. (Unknown includes a lot of Main’s body cam footage.) And finally, after interviews with kids have turned the school’s culture upside down, and flurries of parental Facebook messages have only served to point more fingers, technical details of the devices themselves are taken up by Bradley Peter, a local liaison to the FBI.
With a deep digital dive and looks inside everybody’s phones, with the data tracked and connections made, what is discovered in Unknown Number feels more shocking because of its hyperlocal scale. Adults will never stop arguing over whether to give kids in class their cellphones. But did this small community even know itself at all?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Unknown Number director Skye Borgman also made Abducted in Plain Sight, which Decider called “The most horrifying documentary on Netflix.” We were also thinking about Netflix docs like Con Mum, which had us screaming at the screen – “the answer’s right there!” – and the obsessions and misdirects in true crime stuff like Lover, Stalker, Killer and Why Did You Kill Me?
Performance Worth Watching: Unknown Number features its share of recreations – a high school hallway where the camera’s perspective makes the viewer feel watched, judged. But let’s hear it for the modulated, distorted Text Voice it uses throughout. It sounds mean, dismissive, and threatening all at once, and would not be out of place in any of the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboots of recent years.
Memorable Dialogue: Jill McKenny, Owen’s mom: “I can’t tell you the countless times, I’m just standing in the principal’s office in tears, going ‘Can we please enforce a cell phone policy?’ Why does my kid have access to look at this when he should be learning?”
Sex and Skin: It’s not like the messages started out tame, but the tone sharply escalates, to the point that Unknown Number is showing onscreen reproductions of texts about oral sex and body shaming.
Our Take: There will be moments, as you get into the thick of Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, where you’ll start to feel pretty confident. You’ll compare who’s being interviewed against the list of alibis you developed. Here’s this kid, you’ll say, drawing an imaginary line, and here are one or both of their parents. Everyone’s speaking with the director of the documentary about what happened. There are no glaring exclusions. “I’ve got this,” you’ll be saying by an hour into it. Which as a game gets at one of true crime’s core functions, to reward viewers as top-tier sleuthers. The slick graphics and bold-faced onscreen names Unknown applies only heightens this effect.
But what’s even more striking about Unknown Number is how it compares to another Netflix hit, the docuseries I Am a Killer. Because once this doc reveals the identity of its titular texter, whether you sussed it out or not, you’ll be struck by the candid, first-person access of what follows. And to its credit, during these moments – some of its best – Unknown Number gets out of the way entirely. While I Am a Killer obviously goes to some darker places, when it’s not being generally unsettling, the on-camera space it gives subjects to speak can be terrifically damming. Unknown Number: The High School Catfish culminates with a similar sort of note. Answers given, but with lots of questions inside.
Our Call: Stream It. It’s enjoyable to try and unravel Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, even as its mysterious texter’s harsh tone will start to make you queasy. Trust us: you’ll be more queasy once the doc reveals its flying fingers culprit.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.