Television series
Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer
A three-part Netflix docuseries about a group of online strangers who band together to identify a man posting videos of himself killing kittens — and who keep digging long after any sane person would stop. It's part detective story, part cautionary tale about vigilante justice, and part gasp-out-loud thriller. Bingeable, deeply uncomfortable, and impossible to look away from.
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Making a Murderer2015
The docuseries that arguably started the modern true-crime obsession — a slow-burn, infuriating look at a small-town case where the investigation itself becomes the horror story.
But Ten hours is a big ask, and the pacing can feel glacial compared to tighter shows.
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst2015
Andrew Jarecki's series about Robert Durst has the same electric feeling of amateur sleuthing paying off in real time, right down to a jaw-dropping ending nobody saw coming.
But The ethics of how the filmmakers got their footage have been picked apart since, which can sour the experience.
The Keepers2017
A group of ordinary women turn amateur investigators to solve a decades-old murder tied to institutional abuse — quieter and sadder than the internet-sleuth energy here, but built from the same DIY-justice instinct.
But It's heavier and more grief-soaked; there's no dark comedy to relieve the tension.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Thin Blue Line1988
This is the ancestor: the film that proved amateur, independent investigation captured on camera could overturn a real conviction, laying the groundwork for every crowdsourced true-crime hunt that followed.
Errol Morris's stylised, hypnotic documentary about a wrongful murder conviction didn't just tell a true crime story — it helped invent the idea that a documentary could actually solve one, decades before anyone had a keyboard to do it from home.
But No internet, no group chats, no modern pacing — it's cool, cerebral, and deliberately artificial in a way that can feel distant.
More like this (8)
Wild Wild Country2018
A community spirals into paranoia and extremism with a charismatic figure at the center — the collective-madness feeling of watching a group get radicalized is uncannily familiar.
But It's a six-hour commitment with a much bigger cast of characters to track.
Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist2018
A bizarre, meticulously plotted true crime with a mastermind pulling strings from the shadows — similar taste for the grotesquely clever criminal at the center of it all.
But The plot is so convoluted it occasionally tips from fascinating into exhausting.
I'll Be Gone in the Dark2020
Michelle McNamara's obsessive amateur hunt for the Golden State Killer, told with real tenderness for the toll that kind of digging takes on a person.
But It's more meditative and personal than propulsive; don't expect a tidy thriller structure.
American Murder: The Family Next Door2020
Built almost entirely from texts, home videos and police footage, it has that same eerie feeling of a crime being solved through the digital trail people leave behind.
But It's a single sitting rather than a series, and it's genuinely upsetting with no dark humor to cut it.
The Tinder Swindler2022
Another story of victims turning detective, using screenshots and group chats to expose a con artist — that same DIY, crowdsourced-justice thrill.
But It's slicker and glossier, closer to entertainment than the grubbier, more troubling tone here.
Catfish: The TV Show2012no page yet
If the internet-detective-work hook is what got you, this long-running series is basically a lighter, weekly dose of exactly that — strangers unmasked through digital breadcrumbs.
But It's formulaic by design and much lower stakes; nobody's being hunted for murder.
Zodiac2007
Same engine, different costume: ordinary people with no police authority get pulled into hunting a killer through media clues, and the film asks the same question this series does — what does that obsession cost the hunter?
David Fincher's fictionalised account of the hunt for the Zodiac killer follows a cartoonist and a reporter who can't let the case go, tracking clues with the same obsessive, life-consuming intensity as the cat-killer's online pursuers.
But It's a slow, uneasy two-and-a-half-hour drama with no resolution to cling to — the obsession is the whole point, not a solved case.
Nerve2016no page yet
It's the cotton-candy inversion: the same idea — that a faceless online crowd can push people toward real danger — stripped of consequence and sold as a fun night out instead of a warning.
A slick teen thriller where an anonymous online crowd dares strangers into increasingly dangerous stunts — same premise of internet mob energy curdling into something dangerous, but played as candy-colored popcorn entertainment.
But It's shallow and glossy on purpose, with none of the moral weight or real-world consequence of the series.
People
Production
- Adam HawkinsExecutive Producer
- Dimitri DoganisExecutive Producer
- Felicity MorrisProducer
- Simon MillsSupervising Producer
Recommended by
Only Murders in the Building, The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, Tickled, Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, Crime Scene, The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman, Evil Genius, 24 Hours in Police Custody, Love Fraud