‘Dark Tourist’ Introduces Us to People Who Want to Vacation in a War Zone

In Dark Tourist, a new docu-series for Netflix, New Zealand journalist David Farrier journeys around the world exploring what most people avoid, with the exception of so-called “dark tourists”—people who seek to vacation in spots associated with death and destruction. In his travels, he visits nuclear sites in Fukushima and The Polygon, meets Pablo Escobar’s main assassin Popeye, attends a bootleg Olympics in Turkmenistan (while on Ketamine), watches a “vampire” drink blood from a man’s back during a birthday party, and gets covered in blood while practicing voodoo. He even visits Japan’s Aokigahara forest at the base of Mount Fuji where Logan Paul controversially posted a video of a suicide victim.

“It was a crazy thing to organize,” said Farrier—whose last project, 2016's Tickled, saw him stumble upon the surprisingly dark and twisted world of competitive tickling. While he took some breaks in between trips, other times he filmed episodes back-to-back in what one can only imagine to be an exhausting, brutal process. It definitely wasn’t a beach vacation, but that’s something he’s never been interested in. To learn more, VICE talked to Farrier about his new show, Logan Paul, and the many dark things he's seen in his travels. .

VICE: What was one of your favorite experience during your travels? Maybe something that surprised you?
I had a lot of fun in Colombia when we were looking into Narco tourism, because the people there were just so up for it and wonderful to deal with. I just loved the place. We had an interesting person to guide us through, Popeye, who was Pablo Escobar’s right-hand man. It’s sort of what our show is all about, you know? He killed a lot of people, including his girlfriend, and today he is literally a YouTube star. Popeye is one of the most charismatic, friendly people you’ve ever met. He’s just such a different person from what you’d expect.

The scene where he re-enacts murder reminded me of The Act of Killing in a way. Did you ever get glimmers of that while with him? Or felt like you were in any other type of documentary throughout the process?
Yeah, there’s something about being in that situation where there’s someone acting out what he did under Pablo Escobar’s regime… it was completely surreal. But every place was different. At times it felt walking in the footsteps of someone like Anthony Bourdain, who I adore, and other days you feel like you’re in The Act of Killing, and other times you feel like you’re in an area where Louis Theroux would be very comfortable. I think with the premise of the show, we were able to play with a lot of things. It’s so broad in its scope. I think some people will like that and some people might not, but it’s something I feel quite good about.

I thought it was funny when Manson’s best friend called you out for being like Louis Theroux. What was that like?
It’s good, because even ten years ago when I was making quirky two minute stories for a show in New Zealand, that was seen as my thing. I was a white guy with glasses and facial hair and I’m quirky. So always I’ve been Louis. Literally there are people commenting on the [Dark Tourist] trailer on YouTube going like, “This man is ripping off Louis Theroux.” And that I’m a shitty Louis. [Laughs] So when he said, “You’re just like Louis,” it was the funniest thing. I think everyone in the room at that point, certainly our executive producer was just like cracking up behind the camera and finding it really difficult to hold it together. But it was a good call from Charles Manson’s friend. I’ve gotten the Louis comparison so many times, so it was very funny that I was interviewing someone about quite a morbid topic was calling me out. I was really happy I could keep that in the show. For all the people that thought it who will be watching it, they’ll think “Oh yeah, someone finally said it to his face.”

Was there anything that you did for the show that you wish you could have un-done or unseen?
I really struggled with Russ McKamey, who runs the torture house. I saw people come into that place and come out pretty battered and bruised and bleeding. I honestly couldn’t put my finger on whether he was a good, quirky guy who had taken things to the extreme or if he was some kind of psychopath. He literally tortures people for a living. I found that whole place very unsettling. As far as things I wish I could unsee… no, I feel pretty lucky and fortunate in a way to have experienced a lot of this stuff, because they are things that I’m generally pretty interested in. I like to think that eventually I’d gotten to a lot of these places on my own at some point in my life. If I could have. As far as un-hearing things, I spoke to one of the women who defended Jeffrey Dahmer in court. She had a lot of his original recordings of him going through the different murders. That got pretty intense. But generally, the thing I would probably almost try to un-hear was when I was in Indonesia and there was a lot of animal killing going on during a festival. A lot of pigs and buffalo were slaughtered in a fairly brutal way. I love animals a lot, and that was a really confronting situation to be in. At one point I was running around with one of the guys that was killing them trying to tell him to hurry up the job. He was taking a fairly carefree approach to the length of time it was taking these animals to pass away, so I was trying to rush that process on. I hated being there at the moment.

Where you in Japan’s Aokigahara forest before or after Logan Paul was?
We shot that and edited that before the whole Logan Paul thing played out. Watching the whole Logan Paul situation having been there myself, and the way we treated it, yeah, it was interesting to see all that play out.

You met people in the parking lot who were also looking into this “suicide forest.” Did they seem like Logan Paul, disrespectful voyeuristic types, to you? Or were they different type of dark tourists?
The Canadians we met, it was their first time out of Canada. They had gone to the forest for that morbid reason. They were curious about it. I would not—I mean, Logan Paul is in a whole other category, because he is such an extreme example of how not to treat another human, dead or alive. The level of disrespect Logan Paul showed Japan, I was shocked by it. You see cuts of the rest of his trip to Japan before he went to that forest; the way he’s treating people and what he’s doing—I mean, that guy is just a trash fire of a human. So yeah, those people I met in the lot that were coming to the forest, I would not put them even close to the same category as Logan Paul.

So overall what were the other dark tourists like who you met on these trips?
There was a huge difference in the kind of people who went on these tours. Some of them were much less respectful. I certainly saw a lot of people taking selfies in places that probably weren’t particularly appropriate. And then there were some people who genuinely wanted to learn and were certainly obsessed about those things. I mean, anything we did about serial killers, people, possibly myself included, grew up reading about that stuff. They were drawn to the details of these cases and try to understand why serial killers do what they do. It’s usually educational. But if you’re going to describe a “dark tourist,” there’s no type.

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