[3] From the time the first Paradise Lost film was released in 1996, a growing number of supporters began to protest the innocence of the West Memphis Three.

West of Memphis focuses on Terry Hobbs, stepfather of Stevie Branch (one of the murder victims), as a potential suspect, due to physical evidence linking him to the crime, a history of violent behavior, and his lack of an alibi for the time the murders were committed, as well as damaging statements made by his ex-wife, former neighbors, and, most recently, his own nephew, who claims Hobbs confessed to him.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, film critic Joe Morgenstern described West of Memphis as "a devastating account of police incompetence, civic hysteria and prosecutorial behavior that was totally at odds with a vastly persuasive body of evidence uncovered in a privately funded investigation".

And she saw, equally well, what was there to be gained: dramatic new insights into an inexorable progression from random arrests through groundless supposition, fevered conjecture and flagrant perjury to official disgrace in a supposedly airtight case.

"[8] Film critic Philip French of The Observer called West of Memphis "riveting", and a "shocking indictment of the American criminal justice system and a tribute to the dedication of selfless civil rights lawyers and their supporters from all over the world".