10 Years Ago, One Of David Fincher's Best Films Saw The True Crime Craze Coming

The true crime genre is older than you might think. It dates back to England in the mid-1500s, back when "crime pamphlets" containing bloody, tawdry stories of local crime began circulating among the educated aristocracy. People have almost always been fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, but there was something extra illicit about reading stories of real crimes, and the market for these pamphlets boomed. In the 1800s, the morality of these stories came into play, and fictional crime stories with heroic detectives became more common. True crime became a sort of dirty subgenre, a "guilty pleasure" for the morally bankrupt, even as true crime books became bestsellers. Then, around 2014, it all changed seemingly overnight.

Right at the front of the seemingly meteoric rise in the genre's popularity was "Gone Girl," David Fincher's adaptation of the Gillian Flynn novel of the same name, a fictional story about how we all engage with true crime. Though the novel blew up in 2012, the movie took things a step further, and it helped predict our current cultural obsession with all things true crime. In 2024, true crime dramatizations like Ryan Murphy's "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story" and documentary-style shows like "Missing: Dead or Alive?" both regularly top the streaming charts, and it seems like there is no crime too disturbing to treat as entertainment. 10 years ago, "Gone Girl" not only predicted this rise but gave us a warning about just how complicit true crime audiences can become.

(It might go without saying, but spoilers for "Gone Girl" to follow.)

In "Gone Girl," Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) disappears without a trace one day, with evidence of a violent struggle at her home with her husband, Nick (Ben Affleck). Nick and Amy have been careening toward divorce and everyone seems to think Nick is responsible for Amy's disappearance. People count an affair he's having and the crumbling marriage against him. In fact, they tend to think he's murdered her, only to be shocked when she reappears and claims to have been kidnapped by an ex-boyfriend, Desi (Neil Patrick Harris). It turns out that Amy faked the entire thing, planting evidence for months before she disappeared and playing to the public's sympathy by faking a pregnancy and writing about abuse that never happened in her diary. In the end, Amy and Nick are locked in a permanent standoff, forced to pretend they love one another in order to maintain the lies they've told the world. 

Amy Dunne is an antihero that borders on true villainy. She's the female counterpart of characters like Walter White from "Breaking Bad" or Tony Soprano from "The Sopranos" — a beautiful white woman from a well-off family who wields her privilege as a weapon. Flynn was thinking about "missing white woman syndrome" while writing "Gone Girl," which is the term for the way the media tends to focus on crimes where white women are the victim far more than if the victim is a man or a woman of color, and intended to show that media bias is part of the reason why Amy was able to pull off her scheme. 

Amy's story bears a resemblance to the case of Laci Peterson, who disappeared while pregnant on Christmas Eve of 2002, with some amateur sleuths believing that Laci had faked her own kidnapping. This sadly was not the case, as Peterson was killed by her husband Scott and her body was discovered in April of 2003. Flynn's version of things is less tragic, to be sure, but Amy and Nick's ending is not a happy one by any means. 

The final shot of "Gone Girl" is chilling, as Nick asks Amy what they're going to do now and she looks up at him and gives him a wicked little smile. She has won, essentially, and has trapped him in a prison of her creation. She's not just staring at Nick but out at the audience as well, breaking the fourth wall just a tiny bit and incriminating the audience in her crimes. By indulging in seeing other people's suffering as entertainment, we are complicit in a way. It's even possible that the promise of fame (or infamy) could push people to commit crimes of their own. True crime is morally questionable, and Amy's stare and smile were a warning that the commercialization of true crime could be very dangerous. 

Ironically, "Gone Girl" premiered in U.S. theaters on October 3, 2014, the very same day as the podcast "Serial," the Sarah Koenig-hosted series that details a true crime over the course of a season and would kick off the true crime podcast trend. By 2016, news outlets took notice of the true crime boom, noting the popularity of not just podcasts but also shows like HBO's "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst "and Netflix's "Making a Murderer," both of which debuted in 2015. "The Jinx" even got a follow-up this year with "The Jinx Part Two," proving that the trend is still going strong. True crime continues to dominate the pop culture landscape, to the point that fictional crime regularly takes its cues from real-world cases, making them both more compelling and more controversial.

There are many reasons why someone might be fascinated by true crime stories, but it's important for us to recognize the very real impact true crime media has on our world. Even when the case isn't as serious as a murder charge, the media's involvement in a case can lead to more trauma for the victims of a crime and their loved ones. Having the details of these crimes in the media can be triggering and isolating for victims and their loved ones, like in the case of Mary Kay Letourneau, whose crimes were fictionalized in Todd Haynes' film "May December." "May December" follows an actor (Natalie Portman) as she follows the Letourneau proxy, Gracie Atherton-Woo (Julianne Moore), in order to learn how to portray her in a film. Haynes is critical of not only Portman's actor character for sympathizing with Gracie, but also for portraying her as a sexy, lonely older woman, and not the predator she really was. It's a harsh indictment of true crime as entertainment, carrying on the lessons that "Gone Girl" tried to teach us a decade before. No matter the intention, true crime will always be at least somewhat harmful.

So, what's a true crime fan to do? Is there a way to ethically "enjoy" these documentaries and fictionalized retellings without being guilty of contributing to the genre's many problems? Unfortunately, there isn't an easy answer, although people can try to avoid more sensationalized and problematic programs, like the aforementioned "Monsters," which has Murphy in hot water for his tasteless take. (And it's not the first time, either, as he came under fire for retraumatizing the victims of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer with his "Dahmer" miniseries as well.) Instead, those curious about crime can turn to well-made true crime documentaries done with more concern for journalistic ethics and their overall impact. At least then it's not just about being entertained by real human misery and causing more of it in the process.