I’m obsessed with true crime. So obsessed that once, I thought I ran out of new true crime documentaries on Netflix. I know I’m not alone in this obsession. In law school, I met people who wanted to become lawyers because they loved true crime. In criminology school, I met criminologists who got into forensic science because of true crime. It’s like we were all real-world versions of the podcasters waiting outside in Only Murders in the Building, except we took it one step further and put ourselves into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
All true crime, whether fictionalized in a feature film or told in documentary style, examines the details of a crime and studies the people involved in it. In Psychology Today, Jean Kim, M.D. argues that we watch true crime because of its straightforward moral structure, saying, “The stakes are clear and give us a strong sense of right and wrong, in the otherwise murky vagueness or even boredom of our more trivial everyday lives.”
If you are in the mood for the best the true crime genre offers, check out these true crime movies!
Room (2015)
Room is a film about a young mother and her son in captivity, which captured Brie Larson an Academy Award. The story is based on the best-selling novel by Emma Donoghue, inspired by the true story of Elisabeth Fritzl. When Fritzl was 18, her father kidnapped her and held her captive in her parents’ basement for 24 years.
Fritzl was sexually, physically, and psychologically abused while in captivity. She gave birth to seven of her father’s children, dubbed the “Cellar Children.” In Room, Jack, played by The Little Mermaid’s Jacob Tremblay, is based on Felix, the youngest of Fritzl’s children, who was five when the public learned of their story. The Mary Sue‘s own Lesley Coffin called Tremblay’s performance in Room one of 2015’s best.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Academy Award winner for Best Original Screenplay and 2009 National Film Registry addition, the film Dog Day Afternoon is based on the Life Magazine article “The Boys in the Bank” by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore, which chronicled the 1972 robbery and hostage situation led by John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturale.
Although not included in the film, when Wojtowicz was on trial for the bank robbery, he said the motive was to pay for his partner’s sexual reassignment surgery. In the words of Wojtowicz: “I want them to deliver my wife here from King’s County hospital. His name is Ernest Aron. It’s a guy. I’m gay.”
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chesnut Barrow are one of the United States’ most notorious husband and wife crime couples, traveling the country with their gang during the Great Depression. Although this group is best known for their bank robberies, they actually preferred to rob small stores and rural funeral homes.
The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde is based on the infamous duo. It stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the titular duo.
I, Tonya (2017)
Done in a mockumentary style, I, Tonya stars Margot Robbie in the eponymous role of disgraced Olympic figure skating hopeful Tonya Harding. In 1994, Harding and her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, conspired to take out another Olympic figure skating hopeful, Nancy Kerrigan. As a young skater in ’94, I remember this breaking news story like it was yesterday, but no one ever truly understood what drove Harding to risk everything. The film states that it’s based on “contradictory” and “totally true” interviews with those involved in the planning attack, leaving it up to the viewer to decide how to interpret Tonya’s account of events.
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is based on the autobiographical novel Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth, played by John David Washington in the film. Stallworth was the Colorado Springs Police Department’s first Black detective, determined to make a name for himself by infiltrating and exposing the Ku Klux Klan. Undercover, Stallworth and the Jewish colleague he recruited, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), become trusted confidants of some members of the local KKK, including leader David Duke. The film won Best Adapted Screenplay at the 91st Academy Awards.
Also notable, this was Harry Belafonte’s final feature film before his death in April 2023. He is known for popularizing calypso music with international audiences. Belafonte popularized “Jump in the Line (Shake, Señora),” which appeared in Tim Burton’s 1988 film Beetlejuice.
In Cold Blood (1967)
In Cold Blod is based on Truman Capote’s seminal 1966 true crime novel about two ex-convicts, Perry Smith (Robert Blake) and Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson), who murder a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas. However, the film is not completely faithful to the novel. For example, producer and director Richard Brooks added a fictional reporter, played by Paul Stewart.
“We decided to shoot in black-and-white because we wanted to make it real; we were filming in the actual locations where the various incidents in the story had taken place, including the actual murder sites, and the use of black-and-white gave the film a heightened sense of truth without making things too lurid,” Conrad L. Hall explained to the American Society of Cinematographers. Today, Hall’s stark black-and-white cinematography is cited as an early example of new realism in cinema, and in 2009, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Monster (2003)
Directed by Patty Jenkins, Monster is the true story of serial killer Aileen Wournos, played by Charlize Theron. As a prostitute in Florida, Wournos murdered seven of her male clients, claiming self-defense. Christina Ricci also appears in the movie as Selby Wall, a character based on Wournos’ real-life girlfriend, Tyria Moore.
Famed film critic Roger Ebert called Theron’s Oscar-winning role “one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema.”
Zodiac (2007)
Directed by David Fincher, Zodiac is based on two nonfiction books by Robert Graysmith: 1986’s Zodiac and 2002’s Zodiac Unmasked. The film tells the story of the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer who terrorized San Francisco in the 1960s and early 1970s. He was infamous for taunting the press with coded letters, bloodied clothes, ciphers, and more.
To make the film, Fincher and his team conducted interviews with witnesses, current and retired detectives, and the two surviving victims, among conducting other detective work.
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Starring Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey in their feature film debuts, Heavenly Creatures is based on the murder of Honorah Parker by her daughter Pauline and her best friend Juliet Hume in 1954, dubbed “New Zealand’s most famous crime.” The media never portrayed the story sympathetically, mostly writing titillating accounts of the crime and the possibly lesbian relationship between the girls.
Cases of matricide by adolescent women remain extremely rare. “In the 1950s, Pauline and Juliet were branded as the ‘most evil people,’” director Peter Jackson told The Los Angeles Times in 1994. “What they had done seemed without rational explanation–people assumed there was something wrong with their minds. The press labeled them the ‘lesbian schoolgirl killers.’ Criminal psychology was at its most primitive. The public believed it was a case of insanity, of homosexuality, mental illnesses you could recover from, with the right treatment.”
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Catch Me If You Can stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, with Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Nathalie Baye, Amy Adams, and James Brolin in supporting roles. The movie is based on the semi-autobiographical book of the same name by Frank Abagnale Jr., who claimed to have impersonated a Pan Am pilot from 16-19, flying some 3,000,000 miles to 82 countries for free. Abagnale also claimed to pose as a Georgia doctor, Louisiana parish prosecutor, and sociology professor at Utah’s Brigham Young University. He allegedly cashed around 17,000 bad checks totaling $2.5 million during that period.
“The crime I committed was writing bad checks,” he wrote to the New York Post journalist Abby Ellin. However, in her article, Ellin details how the con artist might not be telling the truth about his forgery acumen, although it appears much of his novel is based on a factual account otherwise.
(featured image: Focus Features)
