People are obsessed with serial killer content, as proven by the viewing figures regularly brought in by the myriad of documentaries and feature films revolving around grisly real-life murders. The best examples of the genre tend to operate with a degree of humility and respect for the tragic true-life events, though, something that can’t be said of The Craigslist Killer.
To be fair, the 2011 did originally air as a Lifetime original, so nobody was going in expecting high art. However, that doesn’t provide an excuse for why critics used such terms as “sleazy”, “trashy”, “camp”, and “cheesy” to describe the story of how unassuming doctor-in-waiting Philip Markoff led a double life as the titular predator.
A Rotten Tomatoes user score of 35 percent is poor for a project rooted deep in exactly the sort of sinister story viewers are always looking for, but at least The Craigslist Killer has been landing with its current target audience on streaming. As per FlixPatrol, the trashy and borderline exploitative deep dive that provides no real answers has been locked up on the Netflix charts all week.
Trust the at-home crowd to devote their time to any serial killer-related content that comes their way, but it’s exceedingly doubtful that anyone will be talking about The Craigslist Killer even a month or so for now, even if it has managed to secure a second wind on the world’s most popular platform a full 11 years after first premiering. Quantity over quality, it would seem, but fans are at least getting what they asked for.