Movies Like
Movies Like UNABOMBER
By Jordan A. · · 4 min read
UNABOMBER is the most-watched movie on Netflix this week, pulling more than 16 million views as it traces the origins of Ted Kaczynski and the long hunt to catch him. Jacob Tremblay plays Kaczynski alongside Russell Crowe, Shailene Woodley, and Annabelle Wallis, and the film sits in a very specific lane: the serious, dramatized true-crime film that treats a real monster as a puzzle rather than a boogeyman. If UNABOMBER has you hungry for more real cases told with craft, here is your queue.
Manhunt: Unabomber
If you want the other great screen version of this exact story, Manhunt: Unabomber is essential and it is on Netflix. The 2017 drama stars Paul Bettany as Kaczynski and Sam Worthington as Jim Fitzgerald, the FBI profiler who cracked the case using forensic linguistics, studying the bomber's own words to find him. It is a gripping procedural that pairs beautifully with the new film, showing the same events from the hunters' side. Watch UNABOMBER for the origin, then Manhunt for the chase, and you have the whole story in stereo.
Zodiac
David Fincher's Zodiac is the gold standard of the obsessive-investigation film, and it rhymes with UNABOMBER in all the right ways. It follows the journalists and detectives who spent years chasing an uncaught serial killer, and it is less about gore than about the maddening weight of an unsolved case. The dread is slow and the detail is meticulous. If the forensic, procedural side of UNABOMBER is what grips you, Zodiac is the masterpiece to watch next.
Mindhunter
For the psychology of it, Mindhunter on Netflix is the definitive deep dive. The series follows FBI agents in the early days of criminal profiling as they interview imprisoned killers to understand how their minds work. It shares UNABOMBER's central fascination, the attempt to make sense of a person who should not make sense, and it is one of the best-made shows of the last decade. If you want to sit inside the investigators' heads, start here.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
For another dramatized portrait of a notorious criminal, this Ted Bundy film casts Zac Efron against type and tells the story largely through the eyes of the people closest to him. Like UNABOMBER, it is interested in the ordinary surface that hides the horror, the charm or the brilliance that let a monster move through the world unnoticed for so long. It is a chilling companion piece about how evil disguises itself as a normal man.
Monster
The biggest name in dramatized true crime right now is Ryan Murphy's Monster anthology, which has turned real criminals into prestige event television season after season. It is lavish, controversial, and impossible to look away from, and it is the clearest proof of how huge the appetite for this material has become. If the new UNABOMBER film is your entry point, the Monster series is the natural escalation, and we lay out the best path through it in our guide to watching the Monster anthology in order.
Why we keep watching
There is a real conversation to have about the ethics of turning actual murders into entertainment, and the best of these projects know it, treating the victims and the facts with care rather than sensationalism. But the pull is undeniable. These stories let us stare at the worst of human behavior from a safe distance and try, however impossibly, to understand it. We dug into that cultural moment in why true crime rules streaming in 2026, and the chart-topping success of UNABOMBER is just the latest data point in a very long trend.
How to pick your next case
Match it to your angle. Want the same case from the hunters' side? Manhunt: Unabomber. Want the slow, obsessive investigation? Zodiac. Want the psychology of the criminal mind? Mindhunter. Want another charming-monster portrait? Extremely Wicked. Want the glossy prestige version? Monster. And if you would rather have the real thing than a dramatization, our list of the best true-crime documentaries on Netflix points you to the facts behind the films.
Memories of Murder
For the finest film ever made about an unsolved case, seek out Memories of Murder. Directed by Bong Joon-ho years before Parasite, it dramatizes the hunt for a real serial killer in 1980s South Korea, following local detectives in over their heads. It shares everything that makes UNABOMBER and Zodiac great, the obsession, the procedural detail, the way an uncaught killer haunts the people chasing him, and it builds to one of the most devastating final shots in movie history. It is harder to find than the Netflix titles, but it is the masterpiece of the genre and worth the hunt for anyone serious about true crime on film.
If you watch even two or three of these, you start to see the genre's real subject, which is not the killer at all but the people who refuse to stop looking. The obsession, the cost, the toll a case takes on the person chasing it, that is the thread running from UNABOMBER through Zodiac to Memories of Murder. The best of them understand that the hunt is the story, and the answer, when it comes, is almost beside the point.
The frustrating part is that these titles are split across Netflix and other services, and finding the right one at the right moment usually means a long scroll. BingeNext solves that by reading across everything you already pay for and surfacing the true-crime watch that fits your mood tonight. Get movie recommendations and pick your next case.
Topics covered: movies like unabomber, zodiac, mindhunter, manhunt unabomber, true crime
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.