The best true crime series and movies you can watch right now

True crime is a genre that offers the best of both worlds.

True crime’s best moments are not only captivating through their storytelling but also revealing as to who they tell us and what place it occupies within our society. True crime at its worst can use our most primitive instincts and be just as nosy as us amateur detectives to exploit victims.

Nowadays, when people hear “true crime,” it’s understandable the first thing that pops to mind are straight-to-streaming docuseries about some horrible person. But that’s not all the genre contains — it has a long and storied history of entertaining and terrifying audiences alike.

We’re not going to dive into true crime literature on this list, but there’s enough time to say that if you haven’t read Truman Capote’s novel Cold Blood and you’re interested in this topic, you should stop whatever you’re doing right now and go read it. We’re also not going to talk about meta movies and shows about the true crime genre, like Nur Murderers in the Building The best American Vandal. Instead, let’s pick out some of the best of the best that the genre has to offer.

The Imposter

Image: Cinedigm Entertainment Group

Year: 2012
Run time: 1h 39m
Director: Bart Layton
Cast: Frédéric Bourdin, Carey Gibson, Beverly Dollarhide

I’ll be totally honest with you: Apart from how often it overlaps with that of thrillers, I’m not all that interested in the subgenre of true crime. One of the sole exceptions is to this Bart Layton’s 2012 documentary on the true story of Frédéric Bourdin, a notorious serial imposter who in 1997, at the age of 23, impersonated Nicholas Barclay, a young boy from San Antonio, Texas, who disappeared three years prior at the age of 13.

The Imposter dives into Bourdin’s life, exploring his history of adopting false identities while scrutinizing the circumstances that led to Bourdin being taken in by Barclay’s family despite their dissimilar appearances. It’s an enthralling story about a charismatic con artist who may have himself been manipulated in order to cover up the true circumstances of a tragic, unsolved disappearance. —Toussaint Egan

The ImposterIt is free to stream on Plex, and you can also add ads. PeacockTubi, Pluto TV and Pluto TV

Memories about Murder

Image: The Criterion Collection

Year: 2003
Run time: 2h 12m
Director: Bong Joon -ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung, Kim Roi-ha

Bong Joon-ho’s 2003 psychological crime thriller recounts the story of the Korea’s first confirmed serial murders, which took place between 1986 and 1991 and remained unsolved until DNA evidence identified the killer in 2019. Song Kang-ho would later collaborate with Bong on films such as The host, SnowpiercerAnd the Oscar-winning Dark Comedy Drama Parasitestarred as Park Dooman (Kim Sang Kyung), a detective from Park Doo-man who is assigned to help solve the case with Seo Taeyoon (Kim Sang Kyung). It is filled with beautiful imagery and stunning performances. And it ends with a shocking gut punch. Memories about MurderIt remains to be one of Bong Joonho’s most impressive films. —TE

Memories about MurderYou can stream it on Hulu.

Pain & Gain

Warner Home Video

Year: 2013
Run time: 2h 9m
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie

Pain & GainTrue crime meets the comical side of Michael Bay. Both are in their best form. Anthony Mackie and Mark Wahlberg play Dwayne John, Anthony Mackie, and Mark Wahlberg as a bunch of bodybuilding junkies who kidnap Tony Shalhoub, one of their clients, in an attempt to get rich. In a desperate attempt to attain the American Dream, their schemes spiral outof control.

The stellar AmbulanceIt’s possible that we are heading towards a Baynaissance. Get up-to-date by watching his funnyest movie. This humor is key to making this movie successful, since Johnson and Wahlberg are both at their most funny in comedy roles. Pain & Gain is a piece of true crime that takes a larger-than-life story, amplifies it to the nth degree, and manages to find not only a riotous good time, but plenty to chew on when it comes to the “promise” of the American Dream. The first eight minutes, available on YouTube, give you a good idea of the movie’s tone. —Pete Volk

Pain & GainYou can stream it on Prime VideoAnd Paramount Plus.

Thin Blue Line

Image: The Criterion Collection

Year: 1988
Run time: 1h 41m
Director: Errol Morris
Cast: Randall Adams, David Ray Harris

With this film about the 1976 murder of Dallas officer Errol Morris, he set the standard for true crime. Randall Dale Adams was convicted and sentenced to time in prison. But Morris did his own research and found inconsistent evidence. He used interviews interrogation as well as re-creation in order to establish that Adams is not the person who fired the gun that night. The difference is Thin Blue LineStile is what sets it apart from all the others. While Morris’ film advocated for and eventually freed Adams after 12 years in jail, it’s still a movie: composed, concise, and engrossing. —Matt Patches

Thin Blue LineYou can stream it on Criterion Channel.

Into the Abyss

Image by IFC Films/Sundance Selects

Year: 2011
Run time: 1h 47m
Director: Werner Herzog
Cast: Werner Herzog, Michael Perry, Jason Burkett

Into the Abyss isn’t your typical true crime deep dive, but that’s the transcendent relief we get from a pro like Werner Herzog. Herzog does not sensationalize, or make fetish of the 2001 murder of a Texas 50-year old woman and her 17 year-old son. He attaches his camera directly to the moment and interview the murderer and his accomplice. Unlike Herzog’s other documentaries, Into the Abyss doesn’t rely on much reflective narration or wandering camera work. The film features interviews with relatives, Texas officials, as well as the murderers themselves. It is an attempt to understand the psychology behind heinous crimes, go straight to the root cause, and consider that murderers can also be people. —MP

Into the AbyssIt is free to stream with a Kanopy Library Card and ads on Pluto TV.

Don’t Fuck With Cats

Image by Netflix

Year: 2019
Run time: Episodes last between 57 and 65 minutes each; there are three episodes total (3.5h to 5m).
Director: Mark Lewis
Cast: John Green, Deanna Thompson, Claudette Hamlin

Beware animal lovers! This documentary dives right into the shocking story of a serial viral video showing a man committing murders on kittens. If that doesn’t immediately turn you off from this three-part crime series, what’s left is a fascinating look at how online sleuths banded together to uncover the killer, the knotted life of the man in question, and perhaps most importantly, the ripple effect of a reckless amateur investigation, which ultimately led to more blood. Reddit’s pop-ups constantly try to solve the next great crime. Don’t Fuck With Cats’ biggest message might be its meta-commentary — violence begets violence begets violence. —MP

Don’t Fuck With CatsNetflix has it available for streaming.

Evil genius

Image by Netflix

Year: 2018
Run time: Each episode takes 45 to 53 minutes; there are four total episodes (3h12m).
Director: Barbara Schroeder, Trey Borzillieri
Cast: Trey Borzillieri

A pizza deliveryman from Erie in Pennsylvania entered a PNC Bank wearing a bomb collar around his neck and demanded cash. The robbery did not go off without a hitch — the man, Brian Wells, was ultimately killed in the end by the activated explosive. This story was retold by Hollywood in a Jesse Eisenberg/Aziz Ansari comedy. 30 Minutes or Less! But Netflix’s four-episode true crime docuseries drills down into the events in whodunit style to discover a harrowing tale of conspiracy, financial strife, and mental illness. Evil Genius doesn’t probe the themes as deeply as the story may demand, but as a character study, it’s endlessly fascinating. This is what actually happened. It’s now a bizarrely familiar tale in American culture. —MP

Evil geniusIt is streaming on Netflix Disney Plus.

Zodiac

Image: Paramount Pictures

Year: 2007
Run time: 2h 37m
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr.

David Fincher’s 2007 movie about the hunt for the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer who stalked the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and ’70s, is at once the stylistic high point of the true crime genre, and a kind of philosophical rejection of it. The meticulous director stages a stunningly exact re-creation of the period and the key events of the case — but instead of heading toward the comforting certainty of What Really Happened, Fincher and screenwriter James Vanderbilt head the other way.

The Zodiac killings are perhaps the most famous unsolved crime in American history, and the cryptic taunts and garbled self-mythologizing of the perpetrator have become one of the central clichés in serial killer fiction (including Fincher’s own Seven). Fincher lets the crime take on a mythic aspect against the stifling dreams and simmering paranoia about the end of the hippie dream. However, Fincher turns a cold face on his efforts to solve the cases of Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), Paul Avery Jr. (Robert Downey Jr.), Robert Graysmith(Jake Gyllenhaal), and Paul Avery Jr. (Robert Downey Jr.), the flamboyant criminal reporter and newspaper cartoonist. The trio struggle to uncover the truth despite some good procedural scenes and thrilling interrogations of one suspect. Their ultimate failure to solve the killings mirrors our inability to truly understand them, making this daringly unresolved film one of Hollywood’s most haunting explorations of real-world evil. —Oli Welsh

ZodiacYou can stream the video on ShowtimeAvailable for rental Amazon, ApplePlease see the following: Vudu.

Unbelievable

Image by Netflix

Year: 2019
Run time: Episodes last 43-58 minutes each; 8 episodes total (6h-25m).
Director: Susannah Grant, Ayelet Waldman, Michael Chabon
Cast: Toni Collette, Merritt Wever, Kaitlyn Dever

False crime has been criticized for exploiting real-life events and making them sensational. You’d be hard-pressed to find a true crime drama series as careful and ethical in its approach as Netflix’s Unbelievable, which puts the victim’s experience at its center and interrogates prejudicial assumptions at every turn.

A series of seemingly unrelated rapes took place in Colorado and Washington between 2008 and 2011. Unbelievable Marie Adler (Kaitlyn dever) is the young victim of one of these assaults. When she’s pressured by skeptical police to retract her report, it sets off an awful series of dominoes in her life. Toni Collette (Colorado) and Merritt Weber (Colorado), start to link the unsolved cases of rape and pursue the few leads that they do have.

UnbelievableIt is amazing that it seems to be as interested in the perpetrators as it is with its victims. It’s acute and damning of the callous way the culture treats victims of sexual assault — Dever gives a heartbreaking performance — and how tremendously difficult it is to prosecute these crimes. The show’s traditional context is not the reason it’s so entertaining, but rather because of. Wever is brilliant as the bloody-minded, resourceful, indefatigable detective who has the belief and strength to battle the headwinds, but won’t take anything for granted: a true hero for our times. —OW

Unbelievable Netflix has it available for streaming.

Monster

Media 8 Entertainment

Year: 2003
Run time: 1h 49m
Director: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Charlize Thon, Christina Ricci und Bruce Dern

If Wonder WomanPatty Jenkins, director made her big screen debut with Monster in 2003, the cultural conversation revolved so much around Charlize Theron’s transformation for the role (and her Best Actress Oscar win for it) that it almost drowned out the side chatter about how this is a really terrific movie. Yes, it’s still somehow considered “brave” for a pretty lady to de-glam herself for a movie and risk looking unattractive on screen, but Monster really isn’t about Theron daring to be unappealing. It’s much more about the queasy places self-justification can lead, especially when a longtime victim finds a way to make other people the victims instead.

We’re in the middle of a weird, weird cultural place around serial killers right now, with true crime explorations of the world’s Jeffrey Dahmers and John Wayne Gacys cropping up all over streaming services, but while Monster finds the human side of real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Jenkins doesn’t shy away from the ways she turns misogynistic violence into an excuse to justify a lifestyle of premeditated murder. It’s a startling, graphically violent, deeply uncomfortable story, but it’s told compellingly and in ways designed to get audiences arguing. Theron wins the Oscar for complexity and verve. Not just because of her transformational makeup. —Tasha Robinson

Monster You can stream it for free via Plex. There are also ads available on Tubi, Pluto TV and other platforms. Vudu.