As “true crime” documentaries settle into their podcast-perfected formula, too many of them spend too much time obsessing over their “gotcha.”

It’s understandable, as the “You’ll never believe whoREALLYdunnit” twist is both relished and expected by the viewer.

But as that becomes essential to the appeal and the hype involved in selling such films or series to the public, they can’t help but give away the game. And if that’s all your movie is about, that’s game over.

“Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” falls right into that trap. Say “You’ll never believe” in the opening TV news coverage montage of this rural Michigan phone stalking case of a couple of years back and we guess, pretty much five minutes in, who spent almost two years sending the most graphic, hateful and detail-oriented/privacy-invading texts to a couple of teens in the blush of First Love.

“American Murder: Laci Peterson” director Skye Borgman and editor Hans Ole Eicker put so much effort into disguising the tree they lose track of the forest. What this movie is really about isn’t the mystery, but was how easy it is to do this and how difficult it is — for the victims, administrators and law enforcement — to figure out who the culprit is and expose and prosecute them.

It’s no wonder online trolling dominates the Internet, that spammers have access to every phone via voice or text, as elected officials take big donations from those who ensure that a “National Do Not Call Registry” never got funding for enforcement or research and development of counter measures to combat harassers, stalkers, thieves and propagandists.

Lauryn Licari was just 15 when she and her beau Owen McKenny became the targets of online hate in tiny, one-school-for-all-grades Beal City, Michigan, a one-traffic-light crossroads that’s a “city” in name only.

A couple of innocent kids into sports and each other, families connected by the intimate size of their community, you’d never think it could happen to these people in this hamlet.

The anonymous texts had physical and personal details of their lives folded into them. They could be sexually graphic, teen-speak slangy or explicitly threatening. All seemed aimed at destroying Lauryn’s self-esteem and breaking up the couple.

It’s a small town with a small school. Who could be doing this? Was it a sports rival of one of them, the class wallflower, a jilted lover, the resident “mean girl,” who was conveniently the daughter of a cop?

The accusations come out and the documentary leads us down this or that path as a local sheriff (Mike Main) gets involved and interrogations kick in.

The parents wring their hands, try to organize to investigate this seemingly solvable mystery mystery themselves and complain about a school that seemed like it could do little because truthfully, it couldn’t.

The big reveal is left for the third act, of course. But I wonder if the filmmakers know what that actually is? Phone-number masking and spoofing apps are available to any lunkhead with a grudge, or on the payroll of a nefarious actor. There are a tiny number of legitimate uses for such tools — corporate, governmental, environmental whistle blowers and crime tip anonymity. The possibilities for abuse — by catfishers, blackmailers, harassers and worse — are legion.

And it takes the involvement of the FBI and subpoenas and Big Government tech to nail down what IP address in this tiny village was the source of all that turmoil, anguish and mental health mayhem.

That isn’t right. And if you haven’t figured out that under-regulation and deregulation, the Holy Grail of Big Tech online access and services, is the cause of all this and that you’ve been voting for people paid to allow this to happen and to go on, you’ve lost the plot as surely as the folks who made this film.

Those are the real villains. As to the one the movie tries to hide, read the early text messages and figure out if they sound “teen” or “fake teen” to you, and start from there.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity, sexual content

Cast: Lauryn Licari, Owen McKenny, Sophie Webber, Khloe Wilson, Jill McKenny, Kendra Licari, Dan Boyer, Dave Barberi and Mike Main.

Credits: Directed by Skye Borgman. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34