Fans of documentaries know that Netflix has a knack for delivering weekend viewing that sparks conversation come Monday. And the fact that the chilling series Death of a Pastor’s Wife is still perched at No. 1 on the streamer’s U.S. Top 10 also says a lot about viewers’ appetite for true crime.
This weekend’s doc picks include one of the best true-crime series that Netflix has ever produced, and a new one borrowed from A&E that is No. 3 in TV shows on the service, as of this writing. And my top pick this weekend is a critically acclaimed documentary film that has been making the rounds on streaming, and given the heightened anxiety over AI at the moment, it’s a must-watch.
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Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer
An internet manhunt for a particularly heinous criminal
I remember watching this Emmy-winning Netflix true-crime series when it first arrived in 2019, and it became a breakout hit for Netflix, not just because of its truly shocking story, but because of how the mystery slowly unfolds into a global internet manhunt powered by passionate people.
When amateur internet sleuths Deanna Thompson (a.k.a. Baudi Moovan) and John Green discover a video online of an unknown man doing really, really bad things to kittens, the infuriated duo goes to work dissecting the video, uncovering clues, and mercilessly hunting the culprit to ID him—and they do, well before the police. But then the whole thing gets darker, as the man, identified as Canadian Luka Magnotta, goes even further, murdering international student Jun Lin in Montreal and then going on the lam.
The three-part series spirals from there as an international police hunt for Magnotta spans the world—including Toronto, Paris, Los Angeles, New York, London, Vegas, and Berlin—with the sleuths trying to help along the way. Combining archival news footage, photos, news footage, and interviews with Thompson, Green, and law enforcement, Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer is one of Netflix’s best; it’s not for the faint of heart, and you won’t be able to stop watching.
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I Survived a Serial Killer (Season 1)
Real survivor stories from those who lived them
As I said, true crime is big on Netflix, and this super-popular A&E documentary series from 2021 hasn’t wasted any time getting to the top three on the service in the U.S. Season one of I Survived a Serial Killer arrived on September 15, and it is 16 episodes of dark, twisted, first-person accounts, led by the survivors—not investigators or lawyers—telling their gruesome stories of how they managed to escape near-death situations at the hands of serial killers.
The roughly 20-minute episodes are often emotional and detailed as survivors use their own words, with some additional context and explanation provided by analysts, law enforcement, reporters, and other experts for a complete picture. And yes, some are hard to watch, with some standout episodes including Palm Springs, California’s Jennifer Asbenson, who miraculously clawed her way out of the trunk of serial killer Andrew Urdiales’ car after he attacked and kidnapped her.
Shot with intimate, first-person interviews and using some dramatic recreations, the storytelling is riveting and intense. And there’s a second season, too, so here’s hoping that this Netflix run sparks its addition sometime in the near future.
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The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
A father-to-be confronts AI’s hopeful and terrifying future
With some of the most recent news stories about AI ratcheting up the anxiety about its unpredictability, and industry and government calls for a slowdown in its development, Oscar-winning filmmaker Daniel Roher and co-director Charlie Tyrell (no irony there) sobering documentary The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist couldn’t have landed on Netflix at a better time.
But it’s not what you think. The one-hour-and-44-minute feature takes something hugely technical and adds a personal spin, coming at it from Roher’s point of view as a father-to-be worrying over what kind of an AI-dominated world his child will be growing into. The AI Doc is Roher’s earnest way of trying to understand it.
To do this, Roher goes to the AI overlords themselves, interviewing everyone from OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei to Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, who speak about the possibilities of AI’s potential, from curing diseases to solving climate change—while also admitting that it can all just go horribly wrong. Roher also points the camera at several critics, such as Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin, Yoshua Bengio, and Deborah Raji, who, while also cautioning against the evils of AI, can see its potential, too… if we don’t screw it up. Does it end on a hopeful note? I’ll let you decide. But it’s definitely worth your time.
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
- Release Date
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March 27, 2026
- Runtime
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104 Minutes
- Director
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Josef Beeby, Charlie Tyrell, Daniel Roher
Documentaries that will get your heart rate up
Here you go—three different ways to ruin a perfectly good weekend evening. Just kidding, this weekend’s docs are sure to spark conversation, make your jaw drop, and potentially end in a bit of snuggling and hand-holding to ease the jumpiness. Once you’ve recovered, though, our other Netflix movie picks and streaming recommendation lists have plenty more options to disappear into.
- Subscription with ads
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Yes, $8/month
- Simultaneous streams
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Two or four
- Live TV
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No
- Price
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Starting at $8/month
Stream licensed and original programming with a monthly Netflix subscription.