July 12, 2024

You've watched Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer. What's next?

the true crime that's worth your time

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Mastermind: To Think Like A Killer dropped on Hulu Thursday, July 11, and it's pretty much what you'd expect from a streaming-service three-parter in the genre. Returning to the oft-told origin story of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (BSU), Mastermind sets up from the perspective of Dr. Ann Burgess, already a pioneer in victimology and sexual-assault research; based, I think, partly on Burgess's book with Steven Constantine, A Killer by Design, it includes talking-head interviews with Burgess, Constantine, and many others, plus the serial-killer-interview audio that powered much of the BSU's early profiling attempts, and deeply Carter-presidency b-roll and re-enactments.

Series director Abigail Fuller (the Oprah episode of Dear..., among other projects) is occasionally heard from off-camera, and it's clear Fuller is invested in the topic. She has a sure touch with vintage visuals; Mastermind is very watchable. Alas, this ground is beyond well-trodden, and a project about Burgess's contributions probably should have gotten its bite at this subject apple much sooner in order to feel satisfying. It's good, but it might not feel like a full meal at this late date.

So, if you've watched Mastermind -- or stopped because you wanted more of a particular aspect of the docuseries -- here's what I recommend next.

Close "relatives" of Mastermind

• Burgess's own books

• Netflix's Mindhunter // Burgess is renamed Wendy Carr and reimagined pretty significantly (not least in the casting of Anna Torv); to my mind, the best possible packaging of Burgess's story was with this property, but it didn't get the chance before becoming a casualty of lockdown.

• John Douglas's Mindhunter // ...although IMO The Cases That Haunt Us has less of John Douglas blowing gold up his own culo (one thing I really liked about Mastermind was the snarking on his big-shottery). When it comes to "origins of the BSU" books, if you have to pick one?

• Robert Ressler's Whoever Fights Monsters // Same story, less self-promotion -- and not that Douglas hasn't earned it, but it's not why people picked up the book either, so.

• Roy Hazelwood's work

Other pioneering women of law enforcement

• HBO's I'll Be Gone In The Dark // My esteemed colleague Mike Dunn and I dug Carol Daly so hard, I made us t-shirts with her picture on them.

• Crazy, Not Insane // Alex Gibney's doc about forensic psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis might have slipped past you -- it came out in November 2020 -- but I thought of it very soon after starting Mastermind. A little unfocused IIRC, but it's under two hours.

• American Nightmare // Misty Carausu is not so much "pioneering" as "the only l.e. figure in the doc who's worth a tinker's damn," but I'll count it.

Other serial-killer #majorcase materials

• Peacock's John Wayne Gacy: Devil In Disguise // Marketed somewhat lazily; really deepened that case's story for me.

• Netflix's The Sons of Sam // May illustrate the dangers of disappearing down a case rabbithole more effectively than it does the actual Son of Sam case, but I learned a lot.

• Netflix's Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer // This is a case that, overall, I don't usually "plug into," but director Tiller Russell got creative in various ways that drew me in.

• Jarett Kobek's Zodiac diptych // Wild, weird, unforgettable, impossible to keep in stock at Exhibit B.; "occasionally poetic, occasionally pretentious, and pace-y and process-y as all get out."

• The Deliberate Stranger // It's still not available on streaming -- this YouTube clip, the DaRonch escape scene, will give you a pretty good idea of how creepy a tone the music sets, at least -- but if you can track it down "through methods," you won't regret it. Well...you might regret it when you can't sleep later.

Optimal use of "heritage" visuals

• Fear City: New York vs. the Mafia // "Guest Jeb Lund and I really liked this one: good local flavor, didn’t try to do too much, didn’t drag on longer than it needed to to seem prestige-y. Even Giuliani had something to offer besides Cryptkeeper cosplay! Maybe Mafia-based true-crime properties aren’t generally your thing, but we’re betting this one still works for you as a visual buffet of 1970s and ’80s New York City."

• Get Gotti // The same creative team as on Fear City; the same smorgasbord of Carter- and Reagan-era tristate visuals.

• The Beauty Queen Killer: 9 Days of Terror // Not the only reason to watch it, of course, but the way it used the vintage footage to reflect equally "vintage" victim-blaming was, I thought, quite well done.

• Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer // My review noted that it came much closer than the first Elisa Lam go-round to living up to "that logline idea behind the series as a whole — that you can iris out from what happened to look at the broader influences of where it happened."