I often refer to documentaries like this as content creation, because it seems like with the rise of streaming services has come the rise of, “Let’s send a camera crew to follow a celebrity that people will want to watch a documentary about, and let’s bring in some easy views.” You can tell which ones they didn’t put a lot of time and attention into, and which ones are actually a labor of love. Something like last year’s John Candy documentary comes to mind, or even this year’s Martin Short documentary, directed by his longtime friend Lawrence Kasdan. Then you have documentaries that seem like anybody could have made them. There’s a limited perspective, everything is positive, and you basically get a feature-length career retrospective with very little pushback on the tougher topics. Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear is not that documentary.

Directed by Justin Krook and Michael Dwyer, Louder Than Fear was filmed over roughly nine years, beginning in 2017, and that investment of time really matters. This isn’t Hulu suddenly deciding that Travis Barker is popular and throwing something together. Hell, Netflix is even admitting that speed is part of the point of its new Instadocs strategy, rushing documentaries into production to capitalize on whatever people happen to be talking about at that particular moment. Louder Than Fear is almost the complete opposite. Krook and Dwyer spent years following Barker, talking to his friends, family and collaborators, and building enough trust that Barker seems willing to put just about everything out there. This premiered at Tribeca before eventually landing on Hulu, and you can feel the difference between something assembled to fill a content slot and something people actually spent nearly a decade trying to get right.

The film even takes some time to establish Barker as a drummer before diving fully into his life, bringing in musicians including Questlove, Tommy Lee and Stewart Copeland to talk about drumming and Barker’s talent. From there, it traces a career that didn’t simply begin with Blink-182. Barker played with the punk band Feeble and then spent time with The Aquabats, eventually filling in for Blink-182 and becoming the drummer who would help define the sound of one of the biggest bands of its era. There’s also Box Car Racer, his heavier side project with Tom DeLonge, his work with countless artists outside of Blink, and ventures like his Famous Stars and Straps clothing brand. The documentary features people from throughout that journey, including Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, Kourtney Kardashian Barker, Machine Gun Kelly and Lil Wayne. It paints Barker as someone whose creative identity extends well beyond being the guy behind the drum kit in Blink-182.

But Barker doesn’t seem particularly interested in making a documentary that simply celebrates the highs. He wants you to know about the lows, the stuff that got him to where he is today and the things he had to fight through in order to get wherever he needs to go next. That means talking about fame, addiction, sobriety, fractured relationships, grief and some of the genuinely terrible things that have happened throughout his life. Obviously, the 2008 plane crash that nearly killed him looms enormously over the documentary. Barker survived catastrophic burns, underwent dozens of surgeries and was left with trauma that affected him for years afterward, including an intense fear of flying. The documentary understands that surviving something physically and recovering from it psychologically are two entirely different things.

One of the reasons Louder Than Fear is so powerful is Barker’s willingness to discuss just how bad things became. At one point, he talks about taking so many pills that he had someone whose job was essentially to watch him sleep and make sure he was still breathing. That is deeply sobering and really troubling. There are plenty of celebrity documentaries where addiction gets discussed from a comfortable distance, after everyone has already figured out how to package the experience into an inspirational story. Barker’s recollections don’t always feel that clean. There are poor decisions, things he regrets, relationships that failed and moments where he clearly recognizes that he could very easily not be here anymore. The documentary isn’t asking you to believe that success cured everything. In some ways, success created an entirely new collection of problems.

That willingness to talk about loss goes all the way back to Barker’s childhood. We learn how important his mother was to him and how profoundly her death affected him when he was still young. His relationship with his father was complicated, particularly when Barker was younger, although the two eventually found their way toward repairing that relationship after everything Barker experienced. There are his various stabs at love, his children, his eventual relationship with Kourtney Kardashian Barker, and this almost staggering number of people he has lost along the way. The long list of dedications at the end to people who were important to Barker but are no longer here becomes one of those little details that tells you something about how much grief this man has accumulated. By the end, I got the sense that Barker himself is somewhat amazed that Travis Barker is still standing.

That’s what separates Louder Than Fear from the generic celebrity documentary for me. Yes, it celebrates Barker’s talent. It would be ridiculous not to. He clearly loves the drums, loves music and loves the artistry involved in what he does. But the movie doesn’t treat success as the finish line. It’s much more interested in survival. How do you keep moving after losing your mother? How do you survive addiction? How do you survive a plane crash that kills people around you and then somehow get yourself back onto an airplane? How do you repair relationships after years of damage? How do you keep playing when so many people who were once part of your life are gone? The title Louder Than Fear ends up making a lot more sense when you understand how much of Barker’s life has been spent trying to find something louder than whatever fear happens to be chasing him at the time.

The documentary also has audio description on Hulu, so it was an accessible experience for me. Admittedly, this is a documentary with a tremendous amount of talking, interviews and archival material, but there is still plenty happening visually, particularly when dealing with Barker’s performances and the footage collected across so many years. I’m always happy when documentaries like this receive audio description instead of someone deciding that blind audiences don’t need access because “people are mostly talking.” Accessibility still matters, regardless of genre.

I really enjoyed Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear, and I hope people give it a chance. I certainly learned far more about Barker than I knew going into it. More importantly, I came away feeling like I understood something about who he is beyond Blink-182, beyond the tattoos and certainly beyond his proximity to a Kardashian. Travis Barker has led a deeply troubled, frequently tragic and ultimately compelling life, and there is more than enough here to fill a documentary without manufacturing drama or turning his story into promotional fluff. He seems grateful for the opportunities he’s been given, grateful for his family and perhaps most of all grateful that he is somehow still here. That feeling carries Louder Than Fear all the way through to the final kick of the drum.

Fresh: 8.1/10