Film
Crazy Love
- Drama
- Tragic romance
- Crime
- Very dark
A documentary about one of America's most disturbing true-crime stories: a successful 1950s lawyer who acid-attacked his ex-girlfriend, went to prison, and then—after his release—she married him anyway. It's a portrait of obsession, reinvention, and the kind of love that defies every rational instinct. Unsettling and hypnotic.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you like true stories where the people are stranger than any screenwriter would dare invent, and you enjoy watching obsession unfold in a case that really happened.
Skip it if you need a romance with warmth, since this is a fixation that is hard to find charming and offers little comfort to hold onto.
What it asks of you: Expect a brisk runtime of about ninety minutes, with a steady stream of testimony that keeps the unsettling details arriving one after another.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Capturing the Friedmans2003
A documentary that excavates a family destroyed by allegations and secrets, examining how perspective fractures when you're close to trauma. Like Crazy Love, it finds human complexity in grotesquerie.
But It's a slow immersion into ambiguity and pain with no cathartic resolution. Some find it deliberately evasive about what actually happened.
Grey Gardens1976
Two isolated women—aunt and niece—trapped in a decaying mansion with each other and their own mythologies. A document of codependency as intimate and disturbing as watching something you shouldn't.
But The subjects are neither sympathetic nor villainous, just deeply unwell and living in filth. It's uncomfortable in ways that linger.
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst2015
A six-part investigation into a real estate heir's possible involvement in multiple murders. It has Crazy Love's obsessive quality—you watch a man construct and deconstruct his own narrative across decades.
But It's long, methodical, and sometimes feels like it's going nowhere. The subject is repellent, and the doc doesn't flinch from showing that.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Crazy Love
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Scenes from a Marriage2021
Both use intimate portraiture to ask: how do two people become trapped in each other? What keeps them there after it's clear they're destroying themselves?
Bergman's original miniseries (not the recent HBO remake) documents a marriage's implosion through six brutal, brilliant scenes. Like Crazy Love, it shows how two people can be locked in a narrative together that destroys them both, but here the lens is compassionate and philosophical.
But It's 300 minutes of Swedish people arguing about feelings and infidelity. No plot, no catharsis, just the slow degradation of intimacy. Some find it glacially paced and emotionally exhausting.
More like this (7)
The Thin Blue Line1988
Errol Morris reconstructs a murder case where the wrong man was imprisoned, using striking visuals and a driving score. It's about how a story gets told and retold until it becomes true—or false.
But The formal experimentation (the stylized recreations, the Phillip Glass score) occasionally overwhelms the gravity of wrongful imprisonment.
American Animals2018
Four college friends plan an art heist; this film intercuts their real-world interviews with dramatized scenes. It's funny and thrilling and asks what happens when bored young men decide to become criminals.
But The tone wobbles between heist caper and serious crime story. Some viewers find the self-aware playfulness inappropriate for the subject matter.
The Staircase2022
A billionaire is accused of murdering his wife by pushing her down the stairs. This eight-part series immerses you in the trial, the evidence, the doubt—it's hypnotic and deliberately inconclusive.
But It's a slow burn that asks you to care about a wealthy man's legal troubles. The pacing can feel bloated, and the ending feels deliberately unsatisfying.
Tickled2016
A journalist investigates competitive tickling and uncovers an obsessive, anonymous tormentor. It starts absurd and spirals into something genuinely dark and sad. The questions it asks about humiliation linger.
But It's weird for weirdness's sake initially, and some viewers bounce off before the real story emerges. The subject matter is inherently uncomfortable.
Anvil! The Story of Anvil2008
A documentary about an aging heavy metal band chasing their forgotten dream. It's funny and touching and about the people who love something more than success loves them back.
But If you don't have patience for metal or struggling artists, it will test you. Some find it too kind to people who may not deserve kindness.
Meshes of the Afternoon1943
Both use obsession as their subject, but where Crazy Love documents it, Deren makes you *feel* it through disorientation and repetition. Different mediums, same psychological spiral.
Maya Deren's 14-minute experimental film follows a woman through a dreamlike loop of repetition and fracturing identity. It's about obsession and circularity expressed through form itself—not narrative, but pure cinema. A radical approach to the same psychological territory.
But There's no plot, no dialogue, no conventional story. It's abstract, difficult, and demands you surrender to its logic. Many viewers find it impenetrable.
In the Realm of the Senses1976
Like Burt and Linda, these two people are locked in an obsession that others find insane. But where Crazy Love observes them from outside, Oshima places you *inside* the delusion, in the body and sensation of it.
Nagisa Oshima's film follows two people whose sexual and emotional obsession with each other becomes total and destructive, set in 1930s Japan. It's explicit, shocking, and operates as both erotic and tragic. A story of love as annihilation, told with formal beauty.
But It contains explicit sexual content and depicts abusive dependency without irony. It's not a romance; it's a document of pathology expressed through the body. Difficult and not for all audiences.
People
Directing
- Fisher StevensCo-Director
- Dan KloresDirector
Production
- Dan KloresProducer
- Fisher StevensProducer