The Serpent to City of Ghosts: Best true-crime documentaries to watch on Netflix, Prime Video, Voot

Does reel life impersonate reality? Or does reality emulate the reel? While we'll allow the rationalists to discuss this question, we can say one thing without a doubt—true crime documentaries have brought many erratic criminal stories out there (like Netflix's Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened), here are titles that will genuinely freak you out. These eight shows will leave you needing to find out about their subjects and may also end up keeping you awake at night.

The Serpent (2021)

Shot across Thailand and the United Kingdom, The Serpent describes how conman and killer Charles Sobhraj was at last caught. Born to an Indian dad and a Vietnamese mother—and brought up in France, Sobhraj and his better half, Marie-Andrée Leclerc, travelled across Thailand, Nepal, and India in 1975 and 1976, completing a series of violations on the Asian 'Hippie Trail'.

Streaming on Netflix.

The Stoneman Murders (2009)

In 1980s Bombay, a serial killer starts targeting homeless street dwellers as a suspended cop endeavours to solve the case. Featuring Kay Kay Menon and Arbaaz Khan, The Stoneman Murders is an Indian neo-noir spine chilling film based on the actual Stoneman serial killings. The film has earned a bit of a cult status throughout the years on account of remarkable performances and a fresh plot.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video

Crimes Of The Century (2013)

Directed by Ridley Scott, Crimes of the Century is a narrative that researches utilizing Scott's unmistakable visual style. Every scene focuses on one event and presents watchers a virtual location-of-the-crime vantage point. It utilizes previously unaired footage, exclusive meetings with witnesses, victims, and investigators of the crimes. Subjects incorporate the 2001 Washington sniper attacks, the killing of John Lennon, the Reagan assassination attempt, the Oklahoma City bombarding, the Waco siege, and the Unabomber case.

Streaming on VOOT Select

Crime scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel (2021)

Quite possibly the most peculiar disappearance in the last decade, one that regularly haunts most internet sleuths, is that of student Elisa Lam. Lam was on holiday—a soul searching mission—in Los Angeles. However, the hotel she checked into was one of the city's infamous Cecil Hotel (where she was last seen alive) that was known to house serial killers, detainees on the run, patients with mental illness with no place to go, and assaulters.

Streaming on Netflix

City Of Ghosts (2017)

The City Of Ghosts follows the endeavours of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, a citizen journalist group and a couple of unknown activists that united after their country was taken over by ISIS in 2014. This is the account of a gathering of regular citizen journalists as they face the realities of life, undercover, on the run and in a state of banishment, taking a chance with their lives to face probably the greatest evil on the planet.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video

Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes (2018)

Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes is a series of previously unaired documented meetings with former Manson cult members, key individuals engaged in the historical backdrop of the Manson case and Bobby Beausoleil, who is in jail serving a life sentence for a homicide he committed in association with the Manson family.

Streaming on VOOT Select

The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann (2019)

Directed by Chris Smith, The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann presents an extensive glance at the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann, who vanished from her getaway loft at the oceanside lodging of Praia da Luz in Portugal, in May 2007. This eight-part series reflects upon the media furor that assumed control over the small town following McCann's vanishing and therefore features the thriving slave trade and sexual abuse/pedophile rings that work on the darknet.

Streaming on Netflix

An American Crime (2007)

An American Crime recounts the genuine story of housewife Gertrude Baniszewski who kept a high school young lady (Elliot Page) locked in the basement of her Indiana home during the 1960s.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video