Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

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Mindhunter isn’t gone for good. David Fincher has confirmed that the acclaimed series may return in the form of movies when the timing (and budget) are right. For now, fans of its grim atmosphere, slow-building dread, and cerebral approach to serial crime are left searching for shows that scratch the same deeply unsettling itch.

Whether it’s the shadowy realism of true crime or a psychologically twisted fictional case, these series share Mindhunter’s obsession with what turns people into monsters. Similarly, they explore what happens to the people who try to understand them. From quiet, rain-soaked investigations to surreal explorations of trauma and motive, these shows deliver clinical fascination with the darkest corners of the human mind.

10 Top of the Lake Blurs Crime Solving With Personal Collapse

A Detective Unravels a Chilling Case and Herself

Top of the Lake stars Elisabeth Moss as Detective Robin Griffin, a deeply wounded investigator. She is pulled into the case of a missing pregnant 12-year-old in a remote New Zealand town. Soon, the mystery gives way to something more unsettling: a psychological portrait of trauma, isolation and systemic abuse. Much like Mindhunter, the show is less interested in whodunit and more consumed with why. Similarly, it examines the cost to the people who pose the questions.

Robin isn’t a savior; she’s barely holding herself together. Each clue she uncovers reflects something buried in her own psyche. The show’s eerie atmosphere, chilling stillness, and slow pacing may frustrate fans of fast procedural drama. However, for those drawn to character-driven mysteries with psychological weight, Top of the Lake is hypnotic. It is a haunting exploration of what happens when a person investigates others’ horrors while still carrying her own.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Top of the Lake

TV-MA Crime Drama Mystery

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9 The Outsider Mixes True Crime Precision With Supernatural Paranoia

A Brutal Murder Sparks an Investigation That Defies Reality

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

The Outsider begins with the seemingly open-and-shut case of a murdered child and a suspect with undeniable evidence against him. Soon, that evidence contradicts itself. As detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) digs deeper, what begins as a grounded procedural slowly twists into something far more sinister. Like Mindhunter, The Outsider is obsessed with details, like blood patterns, timelines, psychological profiles, but it does not stop there.

The horror creeps in through the edges, as logic fails and the investigation reveals something both ancient and inexplicable. The tone is brooding and cerebral, with long silences, shadowy frames and characters slowly unraveling under the weight of the unknown. While it flirts with the supernatural, the real terror lies in its characters’ unwillingness to accept what they are seeing.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

The Outsider

TV-MA Crime Drama Mystery

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8 Marcella Explores the Cost of Hunting Monsters While Becoming One

A Detective Battles Blackouts, Trauma and the Darkness She's Chasing

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Marcella stars Anna Friel as a former London detective lured back to active duty to investigate a string of killings that resemble an old unsolved case. However, Marcella suffers from dissociative blackouts, and as the investigation intensifies, so does the fear that she might be more involved than she realizes. Much like Mindhunter, Marcella isn’t about clean resolutions. It digs into the psychological toll of detective work, where the distinction between subject and investigator blurs.

Marcella is brilliant but deeply fractured. Her mental unraveling parallels the moral rot of the crimes she investigates. The show’s tone is cold and gritty, with an emotional rawness that makes even domestic scenes feel dangerous. It is not afraid to make its protagonist unlikable or unstable, and that’s exactly what keeps it interesting. Marcella mirrors Mindhunter’s interest in profiling, but here, the most terrifying mind might belong to the profiler.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Marcella

TV-MA Crime Drama

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7 Broadchurch Turns a Small-Town Murder Into a Devastating Slow Burn

A Community Unravels As Grief, Guilt and Secrets Surface

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Broadchurch begins with a tragedy when a child’s body is discovered in a quiet coastal town. What follows is not a typical whodunit. Instead, it’s a meticulous and emotionally raw examination of how a single violent act can fracture an entire community. Detectives Alec Hardy (David Tennant) and Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) lead the investigation. However, their uneasy partnership is shaped by personal baggage and deep emotional stakes.

While Mindhunter dissects the minds of killers, Broadchurch focuses on the collateral damage. It explores how grief can poison relationships and how the pursuit of justice can devastate everyone involved. The series is beautifully shot and painfully intimate, refusing to look away from suffering or redemption. Its power comes not from shocking twists but from quiet emotional truths that leave lasting bruises. Like Mindhunter, Broadchurch offers a similarly haunting and deeply human experience.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Broadchurch

Drama Crime Mystery

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6 The Sinner Peels Back the 'Why' Instead of the 'Who'

A Confessed Crime Is Just the Beginning

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

In The Sinner, the question isn’t who committed the crime but why. Each season follows a new case where the perpetrator is already known, but the motivations remain buried beneath trauma, repression, and psychological complexity. The series begins with a woman (Jessica Biel) who, in broad daylight, stabs a stranger to death for no apparent reason. Detective Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman) is drawn into her case and becomes the thread connecting all four seasons.

Ambrose, like the agents in Mindhunter, is more interested in understanding the human psyche than simply catching the bad guy. The Sinner thrives on emotional ambiguity and moral gray areas. It is structured as a slow-burning unraveling of a person’s mind, using therapy sessions, flashbacks and fragmented memories to piece together the truth. Its grim atmosphere, strong performances, and psychological depth make it a natural next step for Mindhunter fans craving that same blend of eerie introspection.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

The Sinner

Thriller

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5 Sharp Objects Cuts Deep Into Trauma and Secrets

A Reporter Returns Home to Confront Murders and Her Own Fragmented Past

Sharp Objects is less about solving a crime and more about peeling back the emotional rot beneath a town’s genteel facade. Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) returns to her hometown to investigate the murder of two young girls as a reporter. What she uncovers is far more disturbing than any headline. Like Mindhunter, the series is steeped in psychological complexity. Camille’s trauma is not just a character trait.

It is the lens through which every haunting moment unfolds. The show blurs the line between memory and reality, making each scene feel dreamlike and disorienting. Director Jean-Marc Vallée brings a moody, fragmented style that mirrors Camille’s deteriorating mental state. Sharp Objects shares Mindhunter’s fascination with the wounds people carry, the damage they hide, and how digging for truth can sometimes destroy the one doing the digging.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Sharp Objects

Crime Drama Mystery

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4 Hannibal Turns Crime Solving Into High Art and Psychological Warfare

A Killer and the Man Hunting Him Are Bound by Horror

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Hannibal reimagines Thomas Harris’s iconic characters in a surreal, art-house nightmare of murder and manipulation. Mads Mikkelsen plays Dr. Hannibal Lecter with chilling elegance, while Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham is a brilliant FBI profiler whose empathy becomes both a gift and a curse. Like Mindhunter, the show focuses on how catching killers often corrodes the minds of those who pursue them. Will’s ability to mentally reconstruct murders makes him invaluable.

However, it also puts him directly in Hannibal’s crosshairs, both as an adversary and a fascination. What sets Hannibal apart is its dreamlike atmosphere, grotesquely beautiful imagery, and willingness to explore madness as an intimate experience. Every frame is composed like a painting, every crime scene more symbolic than literal. This isn’t a detective show. It’s a descent into obsession, identity erosion and emotional entanglement.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Hannibal

Horror Drama Crime Thriller 1

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3 The Killing Soaks Every Clue in Guilt, Grief, and Rain

A Sorrowful Descent into Crime and Consequence

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

Based on the Danish series Forbrydelsen, this American adaptation centers on Seattle detectives Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) and Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman). They investigate the murder of a teenage girl. What begins as a single case evolves into a larger meditation on justice, trauma and the corrosive nature of secrets. Fans of Mindhunter will recognize the same grim pacing and emotional detachment at work.

The Killing has no easy answers or clean victories. Instead, it portrays psychological fallout and the painful burden of digging too deep. Linden and Holder’s partnership is full of quiet tension and vulnerability, grounded by career-defining performances. The show’s aesthetic of gray skies, quiet despair, and claustrophobic spaces mirror the internal lives of its characters. It’s slow, deliberate and unapologetically moody.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

The Killing

TV-MA Drama Mystery Crime

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2 The Fall Makes the Audience Watch Themselves and the Killer Far Too Closely

A Cold and Clinical Hunt Where Predator and Pursuer Reflect One Another

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

The Fall wastes no time revealing its monster. Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) is a normal family man in Belfast who just is a meticulous serial killer. The series follows Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson), an elegant but emotionally reserved investigator, as she tracks him with methodical precision. Unlike Mindhunter, where the killer’s psychology is revealed through interviews, The Fall puts the audience in the killer’s mind from the start.

It is a bold choice that makes the experience disturbingly intimate. Gibson, with her quiet intelligence and emotional control, becomes the moral and psychological counterpoint to Spector’s unraveling. The tone is cool, detached and suffocating. Each episode builds with restrained tension rather than explosive drama. What sets it apart is its refusal to sensationalize violence. Instead, it lingers in the aftermath, the silences, and the slow collapse of every illusion. For fans of Mindhunter’s restraint and focus on duality, The Fall is a must-watch.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

The Fall

TV-MA Crime Drama Thriller

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1 True Detective Delivers Bleak Philosophy and Murderous Mysticism

Season 1's Southern Gothic Spiral Is Pure Psychological Horror

Each season of True Detective is an anthology, but Season 1 is the closest spiritual sibling to Mindhunter. It’s disturbing, mesmerizing, and unforgettable in its quiet unraveling of darkness. The first season of True Detective is widely hailed as one of the greatest crime dramas ever made and with good reason. Set in the Louisiana bayou, it follows detectives Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey).

They investigate a ritualistic murder that spans decades and peels back layer after layer of existential dread. Like Mindhunter, True Detective dives deep into the psychology of killers. It goes one step further, blending nihilism, cosmic horror, and character study into something uniquely haunting. Cohle’s grim worldview and poetic monologues give the series a philosophical weight rarely seen in the genre, while the show’s brooding atmosphere and eerie visuals make even sunlit fields feel dangerous.

Until Mindhunter Returns, You Need to Watch These Terrifyingly Disturbing Crime Shows

True Detective

TV-MA Drama Mystery Crime 7 10 1 7 10 1

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