I could have accepted a lot of the 'artistic license' used in this film if it were claiming to be a movie based on fact, rather than presenting itself as a documentary. A previous comment does a good job of pointing out the errors in the added period footage.
It was a good introduction into a serial murderer I'd never heard of. It was also a disgusting overly dramatized exercise in attempting to concentrate more on the gross out factor than reporting the facts. Not content to describe once how good certain parts of a child's body were when roasted and eaten, it describes the heinous deeds in fact and again in a first person voice-over narrated by an actor playing Albert Fish.
For shock affect it delved into ramming the details of his crimes down the throat of the viewer, again and again. At the expense of his victims and their families the film wallows in filth and was offensive in the extreme because of it. Either we're too stupid to digest the horror of his acts, or sales were forefront and above any other consideration the film makers claim.
It's not a documentary. A documentary informs us of real events without trying to sicken people with fictitious scenes added catering to the director's opinion of what took place. That's fiction. It's not a movie, in a movie you can accept that 'based on' gives the director license to add whatever he thinks will sell. It is a sick perverted film on a sick perverted killer but that not being enough, it approaches the same type of sick twisted deeds on film, that Fish did in person. In this, the film makers succeed in showing their perverted intention on wringing out every last drop of human suffering in their own race for sales.
Joe Coleman, obviously delighted to lay claim to notoriety by surrounding himself with the artifacts of the infamous and psychotic members of our society, sits smugly as he tells us he's thrilled to have the original letter sent to one victim's family, describing what Fish did to their child. How he was 'meant' to have it. Most serial murderers take trophies and this particular derelict of humanity, Coleman, does the same here, living with the material surrounding the worst part of themselves humanity has to offer. If any proof was needed for what I'm saying here, it's in the repeated interviews with this piece of crap. His sole participation in this film should have been only in examining this letter. Instead we're treated to repeated interview segments with no other reason than to try and help sell this presentation of crap.
These flaws ruin what could have been a remarkable recounting of Fish's deeds. The makers of this prostituted themselves for sales and in doing so, reflect a watered down mirror of the same sort of sickness Fish succumbed to. It's a perverted reporting of a perverted person and because of this they have more in common with this man than they may want to realize.