‘Whatever It Takes’: Hot Docs Review

Dir: Jenny Carchman. US/UK. 2024. 93mins

A harassed journalist’s nightmarish odyssey grows increasingly scary and strange in Whatever It Takes, a compelling true-crime documentary in which the audience is advised to know as little as possible before going in. Director and co-writer Jenny Carchman (Enlighten Us, TV’s The Fourth Estate) recounts the 2019 events that befell writer Ina Steiner who, following her reporting on e-commerce company eBay, became a victim of cyberstalking, eventually receiving disturbing packages in the mail and veiled death threats. Touching on sexism, freedom of the press, corporate ethics and Silicon Valley, the film will hook viewers with its twist-laden tale.

Will hook viewers with its twist-laden tale

Whatever It Takes premiered at SXSW and now screens in Hot Docs. Further festival play seems assured for this gripping picture — with a pickup from a streaming service or enterprising indie distributor also likely. Those familiar with this 2019 case may already know the surprises in store, but the uninitiated will be taken on quite a ride. Carchman follows a familiar true-crime-doc template — complete with flashy graphics, polished visuals and propulsive music — but the recognisable storytelling tenets will help court audiences looking to be entertained and outraged in equal measure.

For years, Steiner and her husband David published EcommerceBytes, a blog that focused on online commerce — in particular eBay, offering readers tips on how best to sell and buy products on the website. The blog’s rise coincided with that of eBay in the first decade of the 21st century but, as eBay began to lose clout and market share, Steiner’s commentary grew more critical of the company’s questionable business decisions.

In August 2019, she started receiving threatening anonymous online messages expressing anger at her reporting. But the harassment quickly escalated from misogynistic name-calling to packages sent to the Steiners’ house, including one that contained a bloody pig mask and another filled with live cockroaches. When David received an anonymously mailed self-help book about coping with the death of a spouse, the couple became concerned that these were potentially deadly threats.

That is only the start of this saga, and Carchman expertly guides the viewer through every stunning revelation that follows. Let it be said that the authorities soon realised that the cyberstalking might be connected to someone inside eBay, and soon Whatever It Takes introduces a new crop of characters who shed light on this upsetting mystery.

Anyone who has kept up with the rash of bingeable true-crime docs that have populated streamers such as Netflix over the last few years will be able to predict Whatever It Takes’ general trajectory, even if they know nothing about this particular story. Carchman incorporates tried-and-true narrative techniques, crafting the film in such a way that a fresh twist or colourful new individual is unveiled every 10 minutes or so. But that familiarity is less of an issue considering that the film does not disappoint in terms of bombshells. Plus, one important supporting player who specialises in security — or, so he claims — is a classic of the genre in being completely shameless in his bad behaviour. (The least of his sins — but one of the funniest — involves his insistence on showing his underlings macho military movies to get them psyched up for their hardly-high-priority work at eBay.)

Carchman relishes the telling of this juicy tale, which culminates in public humiliations, firings, jail time and considerable damage to several reputations, but she never loses track of the story’s larger societal issues. Whatever It Takes mourns the lost idealism of the early internet, which eBay embodied through its passionate buyers and sellers who became a friendly, connected online community. (The company’s ethos was ’People are basically good’, an aspirational motto that, as the documentary illustrates, would eventually prove darkly ironic.) But greed and poor strategies ultimately destabilised eBay, and Carchman shows how the company’s downturn reflects the general arrogance and poisonous self-absorption endemic to Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial class. 

Although the film is presented in a breezy, truth-is-stranger-than-fiction package, there is something deeply despairing at its core. It reminds viewers how those with power and money can exert extraordinary influence on the press — and in the case of an independent journalist such as Ira Steiner, make her fear for her life. Even though years have passed since the cyberstalking incidents, Steiner remains shaken by the experience, forever changed by the harassment she endured.