In the weekly column Extra Credit, Charles Bramesco recommends supplemental viewing for moviegoers whose interests have been piqued by a given week’s big new release. 

Friends, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord, by which I mean I attended the press screening of Tomas Alfredson’s new picture The Snowman this past Wednesday evening. The film is, in a word, baffling. In some more words: It is the most bafflingly incompetent film in a year chockablock with them (Eat it, Book of Henry!), incoherently assembled from garish, unattractive enactments of crime procedural cliché. Plus, Michael Fassbender plays a homicide detective named “Harry Hole.” As I understand, his last name is pronounced closer to “hool” in the original novel’s Swedish, but in this English-language remake, everyone keeps saying the words “Harry Hole.” At one point, someone even addresses him as “Inspector Harry Hole.” How everyone that crosses this guy’s path isn‘t constantly cracking up, I cannot profess to know.

At any rate, at least a mortifyingly bad entry to a specific genre provides ample occasion to look back on the films that have done it correctly. In this instance, the tradition at hand is that of the serial killer flick, an ignominious heritage full of killings both colorful and methodical. Here are five of the genre’s best that you can watch at home right now, with handy links where to find them.

More From ScreenCrush