Is Netflix's '42 Days of Darkness' Based on a True Story?

May 2024 · 3 minute read

Chilean crime sequence '42 Days of Darkness' highlights the disappearance of Verónica Montes and the challenge to find her. Is it based on a true story?

Bianca Piazza - Author

Media firestorms don't always lend a hand in the case of a lacking person case. In Netflix's Chilean crime collection 42 Days of Darkness, Cecilia (Claudia di Girolamo) is determined to do whatever it takes to search out her missing sister, Verónica Montes (Aline Küppenheim). What to start with items itself as a regular ol' kidnapping quickly proves to be a tense case riddled with negligence, prejudices, exploitation, and dark secrets and techniques.

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42 Days of Darkness is Netflix's first Chilean sequence to this point. Boasting all of the ingredients of haunting true-crime miniseries like The Act or Unbelievable, to call a few, audience are wondering if 42 Days of Darkness is based on a true story.

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Is Chilean crime sequence '42 Days of Darkness' based on a true story?

You cracked the case. 42 Days of Darkness is if truth be told a true-crime sequence. It's closely inspired by means of the unsettling June 29, 2010, disappearance of 42-year-old mother Viviana Haeger Massé. After going missing for 42 days, Viviana's corpse was discovered crumpled within the attic of her Puerto Varas, Chile, home.

Interestingly (aka suspiciously), Viviana's dishonest husband, Jaime Anguita, told police that at approximately 1:20 p.m. on the day of her disappearance, he gained a phone call from an anonymous man pronouncing he had his wife. Assuming it was a scam, he in an instant hung up the telephone. Hm.

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According to Revista Nos, the primary forensic analysis concluded that Viviana Haeger Massé's frame "did not present signs attributable to the action of third parties and that her death was caused by the ingestion of the herbicide product found on the same property."

This led to the idea that Viviana died via suicide. We do not want to break Viviana's tragic destiny for those looking to look at the series, however you novice sleuths likely already know this used to be no self-inflicted dying.

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These devastating events led journalist Rodrigo Fluxá to jot down the 2018 ebook Usted sabe quién: Notas sobre el homicidio de Viviana Haeger — which translates to You Know Who: Notes on the Murder of Viviana Haeger. His work impressed the script for the Netflix show.

And while 42 Days is technically based on a true story, the directors don't like to make use of that word.

“It was crucial, when making a resolution as directors, to paintings on a story that is now not based on, but inspired; therefore, it does not attempt to record an absolute truth, but moderately to make a choice a greater reflection, much broader,” Claudia Huaiquimilla instructed Chilean newspaper La Tercera, by the use of Al Día.

Considering Viviana Haeger Massé's story was once violently exploited via the media in the 2010s, we perceive and recognize the administrators' push to split their art from the true case.

All six episodes of 42 Days of Darkness are lately streaming on Netflix.

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