Netflix’s Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart trailer leaves people shaken — Watch why
- By Web Desk -
- Dec 10, 2025
Netflix has finally released the trailer for Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart, and right from the first frame, it’s clear the streamer knows exactly how to pull viewers back into one of America’s most haunting abduction cases.
Netflix has leaned heavily into true crime lately Missing: Dead or Alive, My Father, The BTK Killer and The Perfect Neighbor but Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart feels more intimate, almost heavier. Maybe because everyone remembers the name Elizabeth Smart. Maybe because her story still hits a nerve.
The trailer opens with investigators and family members retracing the night 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was taken from her bedroom in Salt Lake City.
A quiet neighbourhood, a supposedly safe home, and suddenly a disappearance that rattled the entire country. Netflix builds the chaos slowly, letting police and relatives recall those first frantic hours.
Then comes the part the nation obsessed over, the strange early suspicion on Smart’s father. The trailer frames it as a moment when authorities, unsure where to look, pointed inward. It’s uncomfortable, and Netflix doesn’t shy from that.
But Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart shifts again when it turns to Mary Katherine Smart. She was nine, in the same room, awake enough to hear a voice but too overwhelmed to recognise it.
The trailer shows how that memory sharpened over time, eventually giving investigators the lead they desperately needed. It’s one of the most striking beats in the entire teaser.
Netflix closes the trailer with a tight, lingering shot of Elizabeth Smart herself — older, steady, reclaiming the story in her own words. It’s a small moment, but powerful enough to make you stop and stare.
The documentary mixes archival footage with new, previously unseen material. Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart promises a closer, more personal retelling, shaped largely by Elizabeth Smart’s own reflections.
She has spoken about wanting survivors to feel less alone, and hoping viewers understand that even after unimaginable trauma, life can still move forward.
Judging from the reaction under the YouTube trailer, people remembering the fear, the news coverage, the sleepless nights, Kidnapped might be Netflix’s most unsettling true-crime release yet.