Boston Strangler

The 1960s Boston of Matt Ruskin’s Boston Strangler doesn't just look cold; it looks damp. It’s the kind of cinematic atmosphere where you can practically smell the wet wool coats and the stale nicotine clinging to newsroom wallpaper. Released straight to Hulu in early 2023, the film arrived at a peculiar crossroads in our current cultural moment: we are a society simultaneously exhausted by the "true crime" boom and yet utterly unable to look away from it.

I watched this on a Tuesday night while my neighbor was very loudly attempting to learn the trumpet, and honestly, the dissonant brass notes from next door provided a better jump-scare than anything in the movie’s first act. That’s not necessarily a knock on the film, though. Ruskin isn't interested in the cheap thrills of a slasher; he’s far more concerned with the grinding, bureaucratic friction of being a woman with a brain in 1962.

The Newsroom as a Battlefield

The film centers on Loretta McLaughlin, played with a sharp, brittle intensity by Keira Knightley. Loretta isn't a seasoned homicide reporter when we meet her; she’s stuck on the "lifestyle" desk, reviewing toasters and writing fluff pieces. When she notices a pattern in a series of murders involving elderly women, she doesn’t just find a scoop—she finds a wall of systemic indifference. Knightley manages to shed her usual period-piece etherealness here, replacing it with a frantic, caffeine-fueled stubbornness that feels very grounded in the "work-twice-as-hard" reality of the era.

She’s eventually paired with Jean Cole, played by the consistently incredible Carrie Coon. If Knightley is the fire, Coon is the dry ice. Jean is a veteran who has already figured out how to navigate the boys' club of the Record American, and the chemistry between the two women is the film’s strongest asset. I found myself wishing the movie would lean even harder into their partnership; it’s essentially Spotlight if the investigators had to go home and cook dinner for ungrateful husbands after a day of chasing serial killers.

A Directorial Echo of the Greats

It is impossible to watch Boston Strangler without the ghost of David Fincher’s Zodiac hovering over the shoulder of every frame. The desaturated greens, the obsession with filing cabinets, and the slow-burn dread are all there. Cinematographer Ben Kutchins (who did wonders on Ozark) leans into a palette so muted that a yellow legal pad looks like a neon sign.

There’s a specific contemporary polish here that identifies this as a "Streaming Era" prestige drama. It’s sleek, it’s expensive-looking, and it’s clearly designed to be consumed in a single, immersive sitting on a couch rather than a theater seat. However, that polish sometimes works against it. The film is so committed to its somber tone that it occasionally feels a bit bloodless. The color palette looks like it was washed in old dishwater, and while that fits the mood, it sometimes makes the pacing feel slower than its 113-minute runtime suggests.

Reframing the "Strangler"

What I appreciated most was how the screenplay (also by Ruskin) handles the identity of the killer. In an era where we’re reconsidering how we memorialize murderers, this film makes a conscious choice to de-center Albert DeSalvo (played with a twitchy, unsettling energy by David Dastmalchian). Instead of focusing on the "genius" of a predator, the movie looks at the incompetence of the police force and the messy, fragmented reality of the crimes.

The film treats its villain like a secondary character in his own crime spree, which is a bold and necessary subversion. It suggests that "The Boston Strangler" wasn't just a man, but a failure of a city to protect its most vulnerable citizens. Alessandro Nivola shows up as Detective Conley, providing a bridge between the reporters and the police, but even his character feels trapped by the institutional rot of the Boston PD.

Behind the Typewriter

One of the more interesting aspects of the production is the involvement of Ridley Scott as a producer through Scott Free. You can see his fingerprints in the film’s interest in industrial grit and procedural detail. Despite the high-profile backing and the stellar cast—including a brief but forceful turn by Chris Cooper as the beleaguered editor—the film had a relatively quiet launch.

This is the reality of contemporary cinema: a well-acted, thoughtfully directed adult drama often bypasses the multiplex entirely to become "content" on a scrolling menu. It’s a shame, because the scale of the production design and the nuance of the performances deserve a bigger canvas. There’s a scene involving a late-night phone call in a dark kitchen that would have been pin-drop silent in a theater, but likely competed with a TikTok notification on most viewers' phones.

Boston Strangler is a solid, professional piece of filmmaking that succeeds as a tribute to two pioneering journalists. While it doesn't quite reach the obsessive heights of the genre's masterpieces, it provides a much-needed female perspective on a story that has historically been told through the lens of the men who failed to solve it. It’s a somber, intelligent watch that reminds me why I’ll always prefer a gritty newsroom drama over a flashy superhero brawl. If you’re looking for a mystery that values the "why" and "how" over the "who," this is a story that finally gets its due.