The film stars Keira Knightley as Loretta McLaughlin, the reporter who broke the news for the Boston Record American, with Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, Chris Cooper, David Dastmalchian, and Morgan Spector.

The story angers Boston law enforcement as well as Loretta's boss, who plans to kill the report to protect the company.

Police do not have enough evidence to tie him to the murders, so he is instead convicted for earlier crimes of robbery and sexual offenses and sentenced to life imprisonment.

By 1965, Loretta learns from a police detective in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that there have been six murders there that are identical to the Boston Strangler's work.

Loretta and Jean create a theory that Paul Dempsey killed the first six older women in Boston before he moved to New York.

It was written and directed by Matt Ruskin, and produced by Ridley Scott, Kevin J. Walsh, Michael Pruss, Tom Ackerley, and Josey McNamara.

[14][15][16] That same day, the Winn Brook Elementary School was transformed into the Cambridge Police Department for second unit filming.

[24][2] Nielsen Media Research, which records streaming viewership on U.S. television screens, estimated that Boston Strangler was watched for 206 million minutes from March 13-19, 2023.

[25] Whip Media, which tracks viewership data for the more than 21 million worldwide users of its TV Time app, calculated that Boston Strangler was the third most-streamed in the U.S. during the week of March 19, 2023.

[26][27] The streaming aggregator Reelgood, which monitors real-time data from 5 million users in the U.S. for original and acquired streaming programs and movies across subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) and ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) services, reported that Boston Strangler was the eighth most-streamed program during the week of March 23, 2023.

The website's consensus reads: "Boston Strangler is nowhere near as gripping as it should be, but the worthy story and strong cast are often adequate compensation.

By the end, even Knightley only has so much space to construct a distinct arc from a dedication that lasted years and altered Loretta's personal life.

Ruskin succeeds in paying tribute to Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole's hard work, but it's less successful in filling in the larger story.

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film a grade of two out of five stars, writing, "A director like Jonathan Demme or David Fincher would have gone for the jugular on this kind of material, but writer-director Matt Ruskin seems a little squeamish and keeps everything on the right side of contemporary taste.

"[34] Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times stated, "Despite the film's flaccid gestures toward the sexism of the period—to boost sales, the women's pictures are added to their bylines—"Boston Strangler" is a dreary, painfully stylized slog.

"[35] Boston Strangler was nominated for Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie at the 75th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

[36][37] It won Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Limited or Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television at the 2023 American Society of Cinematographers Awards.