3 chilling Paramount+ documentaries to stream this weekend (May 1-3)

Paramount+ has a solid lineup of new movies and shows in the works for May (and Battlestar Galactica also found a new home there). But as we move on to all this new stuff, there’s plenty to watch on the documentary side, if you like fascinating real-life stories that are stranger than fiction could ever be.

As we kick off the first weekend and week of the month, I’ve released a mix of new and old, including a brand new true crime series about a family patriarch with a lifetime of depravity hidden from his daughters; a new season of a long-running series that gets closer to America’s most notorious female crime bosses; and a near-perfect documentary film about a journalist’s fierce struggle against a failing justice system.

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My Killer Father: The Green Hollow Murders

The short dek goes here

My daughter and I like a lot of the same things: we listen to music, play a little guitar and like to play Uno. Do you know what we didn’t do together? Drag the corpses across a field and throw them into a well. Father of the year, right here. All joking aside, Paramount+’s latest true crime docuseries, My Killer Father: The Green Hollow Murders, is a dark and polarizing look at a notorious and macabre criminal investigation that will make you question both sides of this cold and twisted case.

Director Aengus James’ (American harmony) three-part series investigates the stunning accusations made by Lucy Studey McKiddy, an Iowa woman who claimed that her late father, Donald Dean Studey, known as the “Monster of Green Hollow,” killed dozens of women, including two of his own wives and a girlfriend, when she was growing up, throwing them down a 90-foot well on their property in isolated rural Green Hollow, Iowa. Additionally, McKiddy claims she and her siblings were often forced to help move bodies as children. Lucy’s sister Susan, however, says the whole story is a lie.

Filmed during a three-year investigation in which the filmmakers even helped fund a private exhumation and excavation to unearth human remains, all of which turned up empty, My killer father weaves together archival footage, forensic examinations, interviews with surviving family members, and heated confrontations between the sisters. Although three of Studey’s wives died in officially admitted suicides, no bodies or remains were ever found and he was never charged. Don died in 2013.

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American Gangster: Queens of Traps

America’s Most Famous Queens Tell Their Own Stories

All four seasons of this BET+ favorite true crime/problem documentary series (seasons 3 and 4 were recently added) are now available on Paramount+, and they are wild. I have only begun to scratch the surface of American Gangster: Queens of Traps‘ 40 episodes, but it’s a fascinating and refreshing look at some of America’s most notorious, ruthless, stylish and over-the-top female crime bosses who have earned the fear and respect of their male counterparts, as well as the ire of law enforcement across the country.

Each 45-minute episode covers a different “queen,” featuring some of the stars from all four seasons, including Detroit drug lord Big Fifty Delrhonda Hood and Tampa, Fla., “tax cheat queen” Rashia Wilson, who destroyed her own tax cheating empire by bragging about it on Facebook. Season four continues with new faces like Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, whose difficult life and incarceration for murder influenced her main character in The thread.

What I like most about the women featured in American gangster is that they all tell their own stories, on camera, with additional and complementary interviews from friends, family, law enforcement officials and even celebrities like Mike Tyson, Dennis Rodman and the crew who often experienced the lavish and sometimes deadly lifestyles of these women. It’s your new guilty pleasure.

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Black box logs

An Oscar-nominated fight for survival and justice

This intense and chilling documentary, created, directed by and starring Japanese journalist Shiori Itō, is as significant a use of documentary filmmaking as possible. 2024 Black box logs was created out of necessity by Itō, who chronicles her five-year fight to bring to justice Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a powerful Japanese television journalist with ties to the Japanese prime minister, whom Itō accused of sexually assaulting her in 2015, when she was a 26-year-old Reuters intern.

Itō’s struggle is arduous, as she must contend with Japan’s 110-year-old rape laws, with the police initially refusing to accept her report and later telling her that “there is no proof,” not to mention the public and political scrutiny she has faced. The film is a heartbreaking and frustrating account of the devastating effects a failed justice system has on an individual. But Itō doesn’t want to be silenced, and her film uses everything at its disposal: iPhone video logs, audio recordings of the police arresting her, courtroom video, and, most importantly, the grainy CCTV footage that shows Itō being dragged by Yamaguchi from a taxi to the lobby of the hotel where the rape took place. This was the only visual evidence of the assault in this case, but it was still not enough to convict Yamaguchi.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s Itō’s 2017 best-selling novel. Black box and this Academy Award and BAFTA nominated documentary directly impacted the historic changes to Japan’s rape laws in 2023. It also won the 2025 Peabody Documentary Award and the Human Rights Award at CPH:DOX (the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival). It has a near-perfect 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Paramount+ has it all when it comes to documentaries: compelling character studies, biopics, and heartbreaking explorations of true crime. We regularly scour the streaming service to find the best docs and other content to watch, so check back each week for more recommendations.

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