In the apparently lucrative industry of true crime documentary films, HBO Max skews more “journalistic integrity” than “exploitative sensationalism.”

That’s why the genre’s HBO titles are more along the lines of “Sobering and Deeply Troubling Revelations of Our Morally Fraught Society” than “An American Homicidal Trainwreck of Mental Illness,” which you’ll find over at Netflix. Does that mean HBO true crime tends to be more, y’know, boring than at other streamers? Nope. It just means that the network tends to be more responsible with its reportage, and less trashy.

But that doesn’t mean HBO eschews borderline-hyperbole – after all, this is the streamer that offered us Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop and Ken and Barbie Killers. It just means there might be (emphasis on the word might) a bit more substance beneath the tabloid tone.

That’s why this roundup of HBO Max’s 10 must-see true crime docs ranges from topically tawdry to Oscar-winning. And either way, these movies (listed in no particular order) are all fascinating in their own way.

• Alabama Solution is only loosely in the vein of what we typically consider to be “true crime,” but this 2025 Oscar-nominated doc absolutely deserves more eyeballs — and what’s happening behind prison walls in Alabama is absolutely criminal.

  Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman use contraband cell phone footage taken from inside prisons to document routine civil rights violations, a method that generates significant tension. They also follow the money: State officials would rather dole out settlements to plaintiffs than stop abusing prisoners, because the labor prisoners are forced to do is ultimately more valuable. Maddening.

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• In 2014, two 12-year-old girls believed they were doing the bidding of the internet meme character Slender Man when they stabbed a girl to death at a slumber party. This is a somewhat problematic doc considering the ages of the people involved, but it explores the upsetting conglomeration of urban legends, internet culture, bullying and mental illness in youth culture. Yes, it’s disturbing.

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• Here’s where the true crime genre eats its own tail. Mostly Harmless digs into the case of a body found in a campsite on the Appalachian Trail, and how, after attempts to identify the John Doe hit a dead end, police get help from amateur keyboard-warrior true crime “detectives.” The story gets weirder and more soap operatic as those internet sleuths get competitive with their evidence and theories (no, the guy wasn’t a space alien). What we end up with is a fascinating microcosmic view of the human condition in both the story of the John Doe and the people who quested to learn who he really was. Fascinating.

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• Director Daniel Roher won an Oscar for this documentary profile of Alexei Navalny, the Russian politician who opposed President Vladimir Putin, and was nearly fatally poisoned for his trouble — the first time, anyway. The film profiles Navalny in 2021, after his recovery, and in documenting his next steps, it’s as gripping as any thriller Hitchcock could’ve cooked up. This is where true crime and “activist” documentaries come together, with highly dramatic results. The kicker? After the documentary was released, Navalny was once again imprisoned, in Siberia. He died there. That was 2024. It took independent investigations to determine he was poisoned. Again.

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• This could be a loose sequel to Navalny: Residents of quaint English town Salsbury didn’t realize that the unassuming immigrant in their midst, Sergei Skribal, used to be a Russian military officer who flipped allegiances and spied on Vladimir Putin for MI6. He was friendly and mostly kept to himself, all that. Until Sergei and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a deadly nerve agent that’s become the signature nasty move of the Putin regime, prompting an international kerfuffle that people in quaint English towns never experience. The incident also prompted a series of implications that went beyond troubling and became fatal.

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• This is one of the true-crimiest true-crime movie titles ever. Not to make light of the subject matter, mind you – this digs into the What Happened of the infamous “2009 Taconic State Parkway crash,” in which Diane Schuler drove the wrong way on the highway, causing a head-on collision that killed her, her daughter and three nieces, and the three occupants of the other vehicle. Schuler’s husband fought and fought against the toxicology report that sullied his late wife’s reputation as an upstanding citizen and devoted mother, causing a years-long high-profile soap-operatic legal rigamarole that even involved the filmmakers. Denial is a powerful thing.

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• That title — also incredibly true-crimey — derives from the nutso film about Christina Crawford’s allegedly abusive upbringing by her very very famous mother, Joan Crawford. The real life story of this doc is more disturbing, though: In 2015, Gypsy-Rose Blanchard and boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn murdered her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. They pleaded guilty. They went to prison. And Gypsy-Rose justified her misdeeds: Dee Dee allegedly perpetuated medical child abuse, a.k.a. Munchausen syndrome by proxy, on her daughter for years. Gypsy is interviewed in this doc, which examines the troublesome mental health issues that underscore this disturbing story.

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• No list of true crime docs can exist without a requisite dose of nasty corporate malfeasance – especially if it’s directed by Alex Gibney (see also: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). The Inventor may be the definitive one from the last decade or so, profiling the misdeeds of Elizabeth Holmes, she of the fake-ass deep voice, who, as the head of healthcare company Theranos, took zillions of dollars for research on would-be groundbreaking blood testing techniques. It was all a scam, and as Holmes faced the music, a cottage industry of documentaries and miniseries and books and podcasts and, and, and… all told her salacious story. Yet another doc, You Can See Everything, drops this fall.

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• This 1996 film is the first of three by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky about the West Memphis Three, a trio of Arkansas teenagers who were unjustly imprisoned for murdering and mutilating three young boys, allegedly in a Satanic ritual (note, the films are presented as a series on HBO Max). It’s frustrating to see what the accused endure: Satanic Panic nonsense, coerced confessions, a conservative community’s crass judgments of young men who are at worst social misfits. Berlinger and Sinofsky’s work here, along with Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line, set the template for investigative crime documentaries. Berlinger still makes true crime series for Netflix, including the Cold Case and Conversations with a Killer series.

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• After the weighty subject matter of the previous docs, you likely need to watch this hilarious-until-it-isn’t retrospective expose about a New Jersey theme park that became legendary for its absurdly dangerous water slides. The place was started by a skeevy stockbroker who built a no-rules wacky funcenter and defied all authority, including safety guidelines, in pursuit of profit. Some of the testimonials in this doc are uproarious, especially descriptions of the infamous Cannonball Loop ride. Of course, six people died at Action Park, which isn’t funny at all. But remember, comedy and tragedy exist on a loop, not a straight line.

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John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.