High Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule is a British true-crime documentary series released on Netflix on 21st October 2022. The series is created by BBC and produced by Blast Entertainment. The four-part documentary was earlier released on BBC in 2021 and is now available globally on the streaming platform.
It tells the story of Michaella McCollum who tried to smuggle £1.5m of cocaine through Lima airport and failed. The series reveals how a teenager from Northern Ireland ended up a cartel drug mule. Some of the scenes are dramatised and played by Tatiana Penfold, Sade Giliberti and others.
-High Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule Review Contain Spoilers-
In 2013, Michaella McCollum from Northern Ireland and Melissa Reid from Scotland were caught at the Jorge Chavez International Airport in Peru trying to smuggle £1.5 million of cocaine into Spain. The pair, also known as the `Peru Two,’ was sentenced to almost seven years in one of the most notorious prisons in the world.
The series provides a first-hand account from Michaella, a former club hostess in the Spanish nightlife, as she traces her journey from arriving in the foreign country for her first holiday to her downward spiral into the illicit world of drugs and excess.
The documentary starts off like a rom-com film or a Lizzie Macguire episode, where the main lead of the story narrates what happened to them or going to happen. It would have been fine if Michaella had voiced it, but it’s done by some other voice actor, which sounds too excited to be narrating this story of going to jail like it’s an adventure.
We get to know that McCollum was born into a big family of 10 siblings in Ireland and as she grew up, it became a place of shooting incidents and sheep everywhere. So she bought a one-way ticket to Ibiza and runs away from her life, back home. What was she running from? We don’t know and it’s not discussed any further.
Then it turns into a typical fictional film, a sudden getaway to an unknown place, where the main lead gets drunk, parties all night and meets other girlfriends like her, and they instantly become best friends. Until, a tall, dark and handsome guy comes along and sweeps you off your feet and on the pretence of taking you to heaven, he drops you in the ultimate hell that you would have never imagined, even in your nightmares.
Oh, to be young and in so much love that you agree to become a drug mule, is just beyond me. And I would understand if someone was offering me millions of money, but our little Bambi was getting just 5000 pounds for doing all that shiz. I mean even in 2013, it didn’t value much, but oh well, for someone who thinks Lima is in Spain, what more can we expect?
Summing Up: High Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule
I am not sure what the creators really want to show through this documentary, if they just want to make us aware of how drug cartels recruit people and work, then sure I got the message. Other than that, I don’t really empathise with Michaella McCollum, I get it that she was young and made a terrible mistake; but do I have to applaud her for how she overcame all that?
I mean she was smart enough to push the narrative that she was forced at gunpoint to become the mule, and when things didn’t go her way, she owned her wilful participation. In my opinion, she got off easily, nor is the cartel guys after her, got out of prison before time and even her family support her. The documentary should have also included her partner Melissa Reid and gotten her part of the story as well.
Overall the documentary is nothing more than a sensational news segment with some sit-down interviews of the people, who know tidbits about things that happened. We never really get to know any deep insight, what kind of person Michaella really is, why was she running away from home and what exactly did she do, after coming out of prison.
High Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule is currently streaming on Netflix.
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