Despite the 1908 murder of Hazel Drew in Sand Lake, New York taking place almost an entire century before the fictional death of Laura Palmer, the small-town community and sexual politics surrounding the incident are all-too familiar for fans of Twin Peaks.
Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost has spoke multiple times about his recollection of Drew's murder while he was a child, and how it led to his project with David Lynch. Recalling in a 2017 interview, Frost spoke of how his grandmother lived in Sand Lake, and how the crime was considered “along the lines of a cautionary ghost story: Don’t go out in the woods at night.
The upcoming documentary looks to “investigate the secrets, corruption and gender politics one small-town community tried to keep buried” in the wake of Drew’s death, says production company Metabook Entertainment.
Directed by filmmaker Benjamin Alfonsi, he adds: “I hope this documentary will give her a voice on screen that she didn’t have in real life”.
The accompanying book release is set to be released in the beginning of 2021, and will feature a foreword from Mark Frost, who also released the spin-off book The Secret History of Twin Peaks in 2016.
In the meantime, you can catch up on every episode of Twin Peaks on Stan.