What do you want to watch tonight?
Each title says who it's good for, and who it isn't. Tap what you want tonight, or say no to one and why.
Closest to MINDHUNTER first
Zodiac 2007
Film
In 1970s San Francisco, a cartoonist, a reporter and two police inspectors spend years trying to identify the Zodiac killer, who taunts them with letters and codes.
The sides of Zodiac
- An obsession that eats years of a life
- Real investigation work, step by step
- 1970s San Francisco
- A case that won't close
Good for you if
- you like a cartoonist, a reporter and a detective trying to crack a killer's coded letters.
- you like a long investigation more than a quick chase.
- you can live with questions that never get a full answer.
Bad for you if
- you want chases and shootouts. This one is mostly phone calls and archives.
- two hours and forty minutes is too long for your evening.
About: obsession · the truth · time · journalism
Hannibal 2013
Series
Both a gift and a curse, Graham has the extraordinary ability to think like his prey—he sees what they see, feels what they feel. But while Graham is pursuing an especially troubling, cannibalistic murderer, Special Agent Jack Crawford teams him with a highly respected psychiatrist – a man with a taste for the criminal minded – Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
The sides of Hannibal
- An FBI profiler who thinks like killers
- A psychiatrist who cooks his victims
- Murder scenes staged like works of art
Good for you if
- you like crime scenes composed like paintings and dinners shot like still lifes.
- you can't take your eyes off Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter.
- you like watching Will Graham get closer to the man sitting across from him.
Bad for you if
- you can't stand corpses turned into displays.
- you want a crime show that plays like real police work.
About: manipulation · obsession · friendship · madness
Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes 2019
Documentary
A unique look inside the mind of an infamous serial killer with this cinematic self-portrait crafted from statements made by Ted Bundy, including present-day interviews, archival footage and audio recordings from death row.
The sides of Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes
- Ted Bundy's own taped interviews from death row
- Archive footage of 1970s trials
- Detectives and journalists who followed the case
Good for you if
- you want to hear a real case from the recordings themselves.
- you like 1970s archive footage of a case that marked America.
Bad for you if
- you can't listen to a man describe crimes against real young women.
- you need some hope, and this offers none.
About: evil · justice · the media
DAHMER - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story 2022
Series
This series examines the gruesome and horrific true crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer and the systemic failures that enabled one of America’s most notorious serial killers to continue his murderous spree in plain sight for over a decade.
The sides of DAHMER - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story
- A serial killer in Milwaukee
- Victims' families ignored by the police
- A neighbour who kept calling for help
Good for you if
- you want to understand how police and institutions failed his victims for over a decade.
- you want a performance that stays with you, Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer.
Bad for you if
- you can't watch real murders and the grief of real families.
- you need a little light, and this Milwaukee stays grey and hopeless from start to finish.
About: racism · police failure · grief
The Silence of the Lambs 1991
Film
A young FBI trainee asks Hannibal Lecter, an imprisoned psychiatrist and cannibal, to help her catch another serial killer who is still out there.
The sides of The Silence of the Lambs
- Conversations through the glass
- A young woman proving herself among men
- A race to save the next victim
Good for you if
- you like a performance you can't look away from, even when you want to.
- you like tension made of two people talking through a sheet of glass.
- you like a final stretch that has you holding your breath.
Bad for you if
- graphic gore ruins it for you. A few images are hard to forget.
- you can't take a story of women kidnapped and starved by a killer. One is held at the bottom of a pit in his basement.
About: fear · power · identity · ambition
The Act 2019
Series
Gypsy Blanchard struggles to deal with the toxic relationship with her overprotective mother, but her attempts to free herself lead to murder.
The sides of The Act
- The true story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard
- A mother who kept her daughter ill
- A murder in Missouri
Good for you if
- you want to understand a true crime from inside the house.
- you like Joey King and Patricia Arquette in a mother-daughter story.
- you like dread that builds toward something you know will happen.
Bad for you if
- you can't stand child abuse and medical cruelty on screen.
- you need some hope, and Gypsy's life is a cage that keeps closing in.
About: control · abuse · freedom · motherhood
Shutter Island 2010
Film
In 1954, a U.S. Marshal and his new partner go to a psychiatric hospital on an island to find a patient who escaped from a locked room.
The sides of Shutter Island
- A mystery that turns on you
- Gothic dread on an island
- A man haunted by loss
Good for you if
- you love a story that makes you question everything you just saw.
- you like a film you want to restart as soon as it ends.
- you like a mood that gets under your skin: storms, cells, a lighthouse.
Bad for you if
- grief and mental illness hit too close for you.
- you want to be sure what happened when the credits roll.
About: grief · guilt · madness · the truth
The Irishman 2019
Film
Pennsylvania, 1956. Frank Sheeran, a war veteran of Irish origin who works as a truck driver, accidentally meets mobster Russell Bufalino. Once Frank becomes his trusted man, Bufalino sends him to Chicago with the task of helping Jimmy Hoffa, a powerful union leader related to organized crime, with whom Frank will maintain a close friendship for nearly twenty years.
The sides of The Irishman
- A hitman looking back from a nursing home
- Jimmy Hoffa
- Decades of the mob
Good for you if
- you like a slow, reflective gangster story.
- you like legends acting together one last time.
- you like an ending about loneliness and regret.
Bad for you if
- three and a half hours is far too long for you.
- you want a fast gangster film.
About: loyalty · ageing · regret
The Wire 2002
Series
Told from the points of view of both the Baltimore homicide and narcotics detectives and their targets, the series captures a universe in which the national war on drugs has become a permanent, self-sustaining bureaucracy, and distinctions between good and evil are routinely obliterated.
The sides of The Wire
- Baltimore cops wiretapping a drug crew
- The docks, the schools, City Hall and the newspaper
- Dealers and detectives seen from both sides
Good for you if
- you like seeing how police, politics and schools keep a city stuck.
- you like a case built patiently over a whole season.
- you want people like Omar, Stringer Bell and McNulty to stay with you.
Bad for you if
- you lose track with dozens of characters on both sides.
- you need some hope. Baltimore rarely changes here.
About: institutions · the drug war · loyalty
Taxi Driver 1976
Film
Suffering from insomnia, disturbed loner Travis Bickle takes a job as a New York City cabbie, haunting the streets nightly, growing increasingly detached from reality as he dreams of cleaning up the filthy city.
The sides of Taxi Driver
- A lonely veteran driving nights in New York
- You talkin' to me?
- A girl he wants to save
Good for you if
- you like a performance that gets under your skin.
- you like a dark, dirty city and a darker mind.
- you like a character study of a man coming apart.
Bad for you if
- a sudden, bloody climax ruins it for you.
- you can't watch a child forced into prostitution. Jodie Foster plays Iris, twelve years old and on the street.
About: loneliness · violence · the city
Prisoners 2013
Film
When his young daughter and her friend disappear on Thanksgiving, a father takes the law into his own hands while a detective works the case.
The sides of Prisoners
- A detective who won't let go
- How far a father will go
- A case built like a maze
- Rain, cold, and grey light
Good for you if
- you like being tense for two and a half hours straight.
- you like collecting clues and trying to get ahead of the detective.
- you like watching an actor go somewhere raw. Hugh Jackman does.
Bad for you if
- a child in danger is too much for you.
- two and a half hours is too long for your evening.
About: faith · revenge · guilt · fatherhood
Criminal Minds 2005
Series
An elite team of FBI profilers analyze the country's most twisted criminal minds, anticipating their next moves before they strike again. The Behavioral Analysis Unit's most experienced agent is David Rossi, a founding member of the BAU who returns to help the team solve new cases.
The sides of Criminal Minds
- An FBI team of profilers
- Serial killers tracked by how they think
- A jet that takes them to each case
Good for you if
- you like working out who the killer is from how he thinks.
- you like racing with the team to stop the next victim.
- you like the BAU as a family, from Reid to Garcia.
Bad for you if
- you can't take on nineteen seasons.
- you can't stand serial killers and what they do to their victims.
About: evil · profiling · teamwork
Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer 2021
Documentary
Beneath the sunlit glamour of 1985 L.A. lurks a relentlessly evil serial killer. In this true-crime story, two detectives won't rest until they catch him.
The sides of Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer
- Los Angeles in the summer of 1985
- Two detectives on a serial killer's trail
- Witnesses and survivors telling what they saw
Good for you if
- you like a manhunt where the city waits for the next attack.
- you like the feel of 1980s Los Angeles in archive footage.
- you want the detectives who worked the case to tell it.
Bad for you if
- you can't hear survivors recall attacks in their own homes.
- you can't look at crime scene photos.
About: fear · the hunt · justice
Making a Murderer 2015
Documentary
Filmed over 10 years, this real-life thriller follows a DNA exoneree who, while exposing police corruption, becomes a suspect in a grisly new crime.
The sides of Making a Murderer
- A man freed by DNA after 18 years in prison
- A new murder charge two years later
- A nephew's confession and the trials that follow
Good for you if
- you want to weigh the evidence in the Steven Avery case yourself.
- you like seeing how a county police force and a court work up close.
- you like a case followed over ten years, hearing by hearing.
Bad for you if
- a real young woman's murder and a teenager's interrogation are too much for you.
- you need some hope, and a family's ten-year fight through prison visits and appeals wears you down.
About: justice · doubt · family
No Country for Old Men 2007
Film
A hunter in West Texas finds two million dollars at the scene of a drug deal gone wrong, and a hitman starts following him.
The sides of No Country for Old Men
- A cat-and-mouse chase across Texas
- A killer who flips a coin
- An old sheriff who doesn't understand his world anymore
- Silence instead of music
Good for you if
- you like suspense built from silence, a hotel room and a door.
- you like scenes that take their time before anything happens.
- you like an ending that leaves you thinking instead of explaining.
Bad for you if
- sudden, cold violence ruins a film for you.
- you need music to carry a film. There's almost none.
About: fate · chance · violence · growing old
Nocturnal Animals 2016
Film
Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.
The sides of Nocturnal Animals
- A gallery owner reading her ex-husband's novel
- A story inside the story
- A night on a Texas highway
Good for you if
- you like cold, elegant images.
- you like a roadside scene that's hard to breathe through.
- you like a story within a story, where the novel Susan reads keeps echoing her own past.
Bad for you if
- brutal scenes in the novel Susan reads are too much for you.
- cruelty told without comfort is too heavy for you.
About: revenge · regret · art
BlacKkKlansman 2018
Film
Colorado Springs, late 1970s. Ron Stallworth, an African American police officer, and Flip Zimmerman, his Jewish colleague, run an undercover operation to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan.
The sides of BlacKkKlansman
- A Black cop infiltrating the KKK
- A Jewish partner playing his body
- Phone calls with the Grand Wizard
Good for you if
- you like absurd true stories told with humour.
- you like stories that really happened.
- you like undercover scenes that could go wrong.
Bad for you if
- real racist violence shown at the end is too much tonight.
- you'd rather keep politics out of your evening. It ends on Charlottesville in 2017.
About: racism · identity · resistance
Se7en 1995
Film
Two detectives, one a week from retirement and one just transferred in, track a serial killer who builds each murder around one of the seven deadly sins.
The sides of Se7en
- Hunting a killer
- An old cop and a young one
- Darkness with no mercy
Good for you if
- you like dread that builds in the rain and never lets up.
- you can take an ending that stays with you for days.
- you like following detectives through every step of a case.
Bad for you if
- you can't look at the aftermath of violence. The film shows what was done, in detail.
- you watch films to feel better afterwards. This one won't let you.
About: sin · indifference · the city · partnership
Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer 2019
Documentary
A twisted criminal's gruesome videos drive a group of amateur online sleuths to launch a risky manhunt that pulls them into a dark underworld.
The sides of Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer
- Online amateur sleuths tracking a man who posts animal cruelty videos
- Clues found in the background of video frames
- A hunt that ends with a real murder
Good for you if
- you like an investigation solved from tiny details in the background of a video.
- you want to know how a killer used the internet to be seen.
- you like a three-episode manhunt where the stakes keep rising for the amateur sleuths.
Bad for you if
- you can't take detailed accounts of animals and a man being killed.
- you can't take a true crime where the victim's family is still grieving.
About: the internet · attention · guilt
True Detective 2014
Series
Each season, different detectives work one murder case. The first follows two Louisiana detectives on a ritual killing that stays with them for seventeen years.
The sides of True Detective
- Two detectives, conversation as tension
- An obsession with a case that won't close
- A place that feels haunted
Good for you if
- you like long conversations in a car more than shootouts.
- you like a case that takes its time and a mood that settles in.
- you like dark ideas and darker places.
Bad for you if
- you'd rather not keep track of one case told across two or three timelines.
- you can't take disturbing images of murder victims.
About: time · evil · faith · partnership