You may have heard the story of “The Boston Strangler,” the serial killer who terrorized the city of Boston by allegedly murdering thirteen women from 1962 to 1964. In each of the crime scenes, he employed the same tactics: posing as some sort of maintenance man with no indication of forced entry and strangling the victim. It’s a story that’s been told time and time again, and it was even made into a crime thriller in 1968 with Tony Curtis playing the killer.

Yet there’s a crucial part of this true crime story that has gone overlooked for decades, and it’s the work of two courageous female journalists who helped break the story through their investigative work.

That is the story that the new Hulu film Boston Strangler, directed by Matt Ruskin, aims to tell. We follow Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) as the first person to link the murders through her reporting at The Record American. Against her editor’s (Chris Cooper) wishes, she fights to work on the story and is eventually assigned to work alongside Jean Cole (Carrie Coon). Together, the two women help to find the identity of the serial killer who terrorized Boston, with the added pressure of the time period’s rampant sexism. The film also explores what it was like for these two women to try and balance their work lives with their personal lives as mothers, in addition to tackling the corrupt police force hiding information about the case.

Watching these two journalists uncover the story is easily the most compelling part of Boston Strangler, so if you’re a fan of investigative journalism films like She Said (2022) and Spotlight (2015), then there’s plenty here to enjoy. With each new suspect, the stakes continually grow. The carefully paced editing only reflects the growing momentum in the case, gripping the audience with each new piece of information.

It’s unfortunate that this tension largely gets squandered in a disappointingly boring and anticlimactic third act that seems to lose the main focus of the story. The overall film’s lack of a distinctive style and tone to make it stand out from other thrillers of its kind makes it difficult to see it being remembered. What we end up with is a mostly fine, decently entertaining thriller with plenty of moments to shine in watching McLaughlin and Cole’s reporting and fighting for the truth. But it’s not quite enough to save it all from feeling like a slightly elevated TV movie.

The performances from Knightley and Coon are the strongest aspects here, bringing their respective characters to the screen far beyond what the middling script has to offer. In particular, Knightley brings McLaughlin’s desire to keep pushing for what she believes in brilliantly, along with her undeniable instincts on who to trust. Although Coon’s role in the film is smaller, her portrayal of Cole is nevertheless a crucial element to this story.

In addition to the behind-the-scenes reporting, Boston Stranger also includes brief dramatizations of the murders. They attempt to add tension and make the looming threat of the Boston Strangler feel even more palpable — thankfully without glamorizing or exploiting any of the victims’ deaths. Sadly, the way these sequences are filmed adds to the TV movie-like feel.

There’s an element of real fear, especially for our protagonist’s life, that could (and should) have been emphasized more throughout the film. Aside from one scene where McLaughlin sees a shadowy figure outside of her house and another where she gets a phone call and hears nothing but the sound of heavy breathing, the reality of the real-life danger she finds herself in isn’t nearly explored enough.

This is in stark contrast to the more effective scenes shot in the newsroom, capturing McLaughlin and Cole quickly rushing to write their stories in time, calling people to try and get credible sources, and fighting against the patriarchal nature of their field, and society at large, in the early 1960s.

There are plenty of elements in Boston Strangler that could have been improved to really make it stand out among other investigative journalism movies of its kind — that much is clear. And it’s certainly disappointing to think about all the ways this could have been more gripping. The fact that the film quietly dropped on Hulu with little to no promotion at all is clearly indicative of their lack of faith.

But there is still quite a lot here that makes it all worth sitting through anyway, mostly for its remarkable performances and commitment to telling an overlooked story in a fairly engaging way. Most importantly, the film serves to remind us that even when we think we may know all about an infamous case or moment in history, sometimes we haven’t even heard half of it.

Review Courtesy of Matt Minton