Since the likes of Making A Murderer and Tiger King gripped streaming audiences around the world, it’s been clear that true crime docs are no longer niche entertainment, but a mainstream obsession with the grislier side of human nature.
Larger conversations about the cultural significance of this have delved into why documentaries like these tend to appeal more to women, as well as the ethics of documentary-making itself: Do the aforementioned Netflix mega-hits actually present their subjects in a fair and accurate light, or as sideshow attractions dished up as bingeable TV dinners for us to consume, digest, spit out and forget?
I’m not here to give you any answers to the above. Instead, I just want to preface my personal rundown of ‘favourite’ weird, wild and dark docuseries and films by saying that if you like watching this kind of thing, then you do you; no judgement here, from a fellow deep diver. However, keeping a wary eye on the difference between exploitation and exploration when watching these kinds of docs is highly advisable, as well as remembering that their content are real things that happened to real people.
With all that in mind, let’s get into what you came here for: the very best – and wildest – true crimes docs I’ve seen and would highly recommend, as well as where you can stream them.
KEEP SWEET, PRAY AND OBEY
Content warnings: sexual assault, forced marriage, extreme misogyny, paedophilia
The Church of Latter-Days Saints has probably had the worst press of any well-known religion in the past few decades outside of the Catholic Church and the Church of Scientology. And for good reason. The title of Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey refers to the oppressive and grossly misogynistic lifestyle imposed on the women of the Fundamentalists, a separatist sect of the Mormon church deemed too ‘extreme’ for even the Mormon state of Utah. While modern Mormons have all but abandoned their once-sanctioned practice of polygamy, these Fundamentalists have doubled and even quadrupled down, led by a tyrannical Prophet dynasty who insist that more sister-wives equal more male power in the closed-off community.
Though having more than one wife or husband is illegal in the US, as one Utah lawmaker explains in the doc, it doesn’t tend to be enforced as separating families who are perfectly content (and consent to) living an unorthodox lifestyle isn’t preferable for authorities. However, in cases such as the Fundamentalists, where this domestic structure is used to abuse, control and manipulate underage girls under a pernicious religious figure-turned cult leader, intervention isn’t just necessary but life-saving. The only silver lining comes from the survivors, whose accounts speak to the exceptional resilience, determination and kinship of young women.
Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey is streaming on Netflix.
HOLY HELL
Content warnings: sexual assault, homophobia
One of the few documentaries about a cult made by a former member, Holy Hell pieces together footage filmed by Will Allen during his time with the Buddhafield – a spiritual group that began in LA in the 80s as a wellness and meditation retreat presided over by the mysterious, Ken Doll-esque Michael Rostand. Will, without a place to go after being rejected by his mother for coming out as gay, was invited to join by his sister and stayed there for the next 22 years.
Like many a We-Ho nomad, Michael had previously sought fame as a film star but instead settled for being adored by 100 yoga fans looking to live an alternative, communal existence, and enlisting Will as his personal filmmaker, or rather, “propaganda minister”. Many of these films mirror the stereotypical image cults conjure: groups of people uniformly dressed in euphoric trances while a charismatic but dead-behind-the-eyes god-like leader smiles on. Unfortunately, a darker side to Michael steadily emerges during the film, as his zen façade cracks to reveal a remorseless predator.
Holy Hell is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
THE STAIRCASE
Content warnings: violence against women, biphobia
Considerably older than the others on this list, The Staircase has gained renewed relevancy due to the recent dramatisation starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette, which, having not seen yet, I can’t comment on the quality of. However, what I can tell you is that the original French docuseries it’s based on – uploaded and updated by Netflix recently – is perhaps one of the finest (non-fictionalised) depictions of a murder investigation ever put to film.
The beating heart of Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s miniseries, which began in 2004 and stretches as recently as 2018, is the man at the centre of it all: American novelist Michael Peterson. In 2001, Peterson’s wife was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their home. He claimed it was an accident, but due to the nature of her injuries, the police didn’t buy it. Thus began over a decade of a man’s pursuit of justice, a family torn down the middle, and one lawyer’s dogged belief that a rogue owl, of all things, might be the real culprit. Whatever conclusions you draw, Peterson is a magnetic and measured subject, framed by Lestrade’s sympathetic, at times, poetic, filmmaking.
The Staircase is streaming on Netflix.
LULARICH
Content warnings: misogyny
Those of us outside of the US may not be too familiar with the hideous patterned clothing empire that is LuLaRoe, but on American shores, the company has become nationally synonymous with scandal. Its origins are humble: set up by Morman power couple (of course) DeAnne Brady and Mark Stidham over ten years ago to sell low-cost, high-quality fashion you can’t buy in shops to women door-to-door. As the business took off, so did the interest in customers selling the garments themselves, and LuLaRoe eventually became one of the country’s fastest-growing multi-level marketing companies.
As one expert in this four-part series explains, while pyramid schemes are illegal, MLMs are not – so as long as the product or service being sold by these armies of foot soldiers brings in more money than recruitment… You can guess the sliding scale LuLaRoe began to go down knowing this. This, combined with the company growing faster than its inexperienced, family-run operation could handle, cut corners in quality control, an aggressively cult-like approach to recruitment – and honestly, just really ugly leggings – makes LuLaRich a fascinating cautionary tale on consumerism, fast fashion and greed.
LuLaRich is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
LORENA
Content warnings: violence against women, graphic discussion of sexual assault, racism, PTSD
Even if the names John and Lorena Bobbitt don’t ring any bells, you’ll almost certainly have heard tell of the wife who cut her husband’s penis off with a kitchen knife while he slept, then drove off and dumped it on the roadside. This was the graphic climax to a horrific spate of marital torment detailed in an internationally obsessed over court case in the early 90s. While John’s severed appendage was recovered and reattached and Lorena received mental health treatment, the afterlife of this case, as this miniseries uncovers, is almost as bizarre and shocking as the main event.
After their separation, Lorena and John went on to live very different lives: Lorena has used her platform to raise awareness of violence against women while John has used his to fall down the rabbit hole of washed-up celebrity endorsements, debauchery and botched enhancement surgery. His subsequent marriages and relationships only cement the grim truth Lorena made the world aware of, while he maintains to the documentary makers a delusional non-accountability for any of his, frankly, disgusting actions. It’s rare that one true crime story can cover so much ground, from changing attitudes to sexual assault to the dark side of fame, but Lorena really does have it all.
Lorena is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
CURSE OF THE CHIPPENDALES
Content warnings: racism, substance abuse, suicide
If you’re looking for something that combines sex, greed, murder and just about every other cardinal sin, Curse of the Chippendales is a truly oiled-up ride. The male exotic dance brand began as an experimental ladies’ night in an LA club in the late 70s, and quickly expanded into a multi-million dollar phenomenon with multiple US locations and a globe-trotting tour. On its own, it’s an interesting lens through which to view the tail end of this period of infamous sexual liberation and greater equality for women. But when the troupe’s lead choreographer is assassinated in his office, things take an even more improbable turn.
In the middle of it all is Chippendale head honcho Somen Banerjee, an unassuming American-Indian immigrant looking to make a name for himself. A murder-suicide, arson attacks, gatekeeping and a transatlantic poisoning attempt in Blackpool mire the company in controversy, while those closest to Banerjee become alarmed and suspicious of his increasingly erratic behaviour. If ever there was a searing indictment of the perils of the American dream and American excess, Curse of the Chippendales is it.
Curse of the Chippendales is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
WILD, WILD COUNTRY
Cults don’t get much wilder than the Rajneesh movement, and cult documentaries don’t get better made than Wild, Wild Country. Produced by Mark and Jay Duplass (among others), this six-part series begins in India and ends in Germany, charting the formation and collapse of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s devoted-to-a-fault ashram. In the 70s, the guru attracted a large number of foreign New Age types looking for spiritual enlightenment to his base in his native India. Deciding to capitalise, he and his loyal secretary Ma Anand Sheela shifted operations to a vacant dust bowl in Oregon in 1981, where the colony set out to establish their own independent, self-sufficient community.
Their alien way of life soon set off a chain of events resulting in the domineering Sheela becoming more and more eager to defend the Rajneesh’s right to exist, emboldened by the US constitution. But as tensions flare, this defensive instinct becomes violently proactive rather than reactive, testing America’s commitment to religious freedom to the limit.
Other than its absorbing subject matter, what makes Wild, Wild Country a cut above the rest is its hypnotic storytelling. The artistry of the documentary genre is undeniable here.
Wild, Wild Country is streaming on Netflix.
DON’T FUCK WITH CATS: HUNTING AN INTERNET KILLER
Content warnings: animal cruelty, graphic violence
If Don’t Fuck With Cats was a scripted story, you would dismiss it for being utterly implausible – not to mention cliché. And yet, it’s all horrifyingly true. What begins with a mysterious online video of an anonymous person killing a cat in their bedroom slowly evolves into a real game of cat and mouse between a fame-hungry, violent psychopath and a group of persistent amateur Internet sleuths, culminating in, honestly, one of the most disturbing and unbelievable reveals I’ve ever come across in my true crime forays.
The tongue-in-cheek title refers, of course, to the fact that cats are sacred beings in the eyes of the always-online crowd, and their reaction to the inciting incident – despite its horrendous cruelty – is worryingly obsessive. However, as the culprit’s crimes escalate to their logical non-animal conclusion, the series makes both its interviewees and we, the audience, wonder if, without all this attention, the killer wouldn’t have been spurred to keep putting on a ‘show’ for those watching at home in the first place, and might have remained a one-and-done nobody.
Don’t Fuck With Cats is streaming on Netflix.
UNSOLVED MYSTERIES
Content warnings: graphic violence, assault
Previously an American staple, Netflix’s revival of the long-running cult mystery series in 2020 brought Unsolved Mysteries to the global masses – and boy am I glad about it. Aside from its earworm of a theme song, these tales of strange disappearances, missing criminals, unexplainable evidence and even the paranormal are truly addictive, if not frustrating in that they are, obviously, unsolved.
Earlier versions of the show are kind of dated nowadays – with cheesy narration from a stern-voiced presenter (Raymond Burr, originally) and soapy reenactments. Netflix’s iteration is more stylistic, with no presenter, subtler dramatisations and higher production values. This being a true crime list, some of the 2020 series’ episodes – including alleged alien abductions in the States and wandering ghosts in Japan – might feel out of place. But the rest of the more earthly criminal cases fit right in, even if the usual satisfying pay-off never comes.
Unsolved Mysteries is streaming on Netflix.
THE BIG CONN
Content warnings: suicide
For years, social security lawyer Eric C. Conn was one of eastern Kentucky’s most famous faces. Then, and completely by chance, a Wall Street Journal journalist happened to take a closer look at his case statistics in the early 2010s, and couldn’t help but feel something was fishy about his abnormally high success rate. After travelling to Conn’s home town to investigate, he soon found he wasn’t the only one to have noticed: two whistleblowers had been ringing the alarm for a while, but were put under tremendous pressure to stay quiet.
Essentially, Conn’s business was a get-rich scheme exploiting the government’s poorly-managed disability benefits system. By the time the feds actually did something, it was estimated he’d defrauded the US taxpayer around half a billion dollars. More extraordinary still, he refused to go down without a wild goose chase around South America, and even taunted his pursuers with marketing portraying himself as James Bond.
As the investigating journalist summarises in The Big Conn, what makes Conn compelling is that he’s neither purely a villain nor a hero but rather, a mix of the two – an “evil Robin Hood” siphoning off money for one of the most economically deprived areas in America while living it large at the expense of the masses.
The Big Conn is streaming on Apple TV+.
MURDER AMONG THE MORMONS
Content warnings: suicide
Yes, yet another true crime doc involving Mormons because, like I said earlier, really, really bad press. Here, however, as the title Murder Among The Mormons suggests, the Church of Latter-Day Saints are actually victims rather than perpetrators. For those like myself, who knew absolutely nothing about the incident or the man behind all this (a former Mormon), the full details are truly sensational, though it’s a credit to the show that it never feels overly dramatised or exploitative.
The BBC-made docuseries eases you in slowly with the contextual details: the detonation of three deadly pipe bombs in Salt Lake City, the Mormon capital, in 1985, and the secret trading of old documents valuable to the Church that seemed to be tied to the terrorist attack. What unfolds as the investigation deepens, though, is that there was far more to this incident and the allegedly authentic documents than met the eye, peeling back the layers on one of the most hyper-focused, prodigiously skilled yet cold-hearted conmen in recent history.
Murder Among The Mormons is streaming on Netflix.
OUR FATHER
Content warnings: discussion of rape
There’s nothing quite as chilling as someone in a position of utmost trust violating said trust. But what about violating it dozens of times and showing absolutely no remorse? As a leading fertility doctor in Indianapolis, Dr Donald Cline treated countless female patients who were having trouble conceiving with their partners or by themselves, and with artificial insemination, made their biological parenting dreams come true. But with the dawn of modern ancestry-tracking sites, the horrible reality of his ‘treatment’ came to light.
Using one of these sites to find out more about her biological father, one of the daughters of a former patient discovered that she had a lot more half-siblings than would be considered normal. More disturbingly, all of their parentages could be traced back to Cline himself, meaning that he used his own specimen to impregnate his patients without their consent. When confronted, Cline is sociopathically dismissive about his unethical actions while insisting that he didn’t do it that often. A continually ticking sibling counter as daughter No. 1 continues her search begs to differ though.
Why did he do it? Our Father never arrives at a solid answer, though speculation points to everything from a killer’s guilty conscience to religious white supremacists. Though a little drawn-out and heavy-handed in its characterisations, the film is still a worthy WTF journey.
Our Father is streaming on Netflix.
words HANNAH COLLINS
