There’s no doubt that the rising popularity of the true crime genre is concerning. Podcasts like Crime Junkies and My Favorite Murder have turned a morbid fascination into a cash cow, and TV series were quick to follow, from Ryan Murphy’s glitzy depictions of the assassination of Gianni Versace and the Menendez murders, to not one but two different miniseries about the alleged murderer Candy Montgomery.
It’s now a pretty cold take to say true crime should focus more on the victims, something attempted in recent projects like Netflix’s Woman of the Hour. But the latest attempt is also the most confusing: even though it is about a real serial murderer, so much of the actual story is fictionalized to the point of fanfiction. But bizarrely, Happy Face, the tedious new true-crime thriller on Paramount+, still tries to moralize about the rise of true crime.
