The next chapter in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monster anthology is already set — a Lizzie Borden story will follow the footsteps of Dahmer and The Menendez Murders. But after sitting through all eight episodes of Monster: The Ed Gein Story, the first installment entirely written and created by Brennan, one can only say: maybe they shouldn’t.
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This entry is a mess — ambitious, yes, but incoherently so.
By its exhausting final two episodes, the series has transformed into a grand,
ponderous thesis on serial killers — one that tries to paint Ed Gein as the
archetypal figure behind every true-crime narrative, both real and fictional.
It’s a bold idea, but the execution is so erratic that it turns what might have
been provocative into a slog.
Brennan’s ironic premise is that Gein himself, often
mythologized as a monster, was really just a damaged, gentle man —
misunderstood, mentally ill, and shaped by a domineering mother. The “real”
monsters, the show argues, are the people who turned his story into
entertainment: future killers who idolized him, writers who profited off his
life, and, most damningly, the audiences who consume these stories. Yet
somehow, Murphy and Brennan exempt themselves from this critique, even as they
produce yet another glossy serial killer spectacle. The hypocrisy is stunning —
they condemn the same voyeurism their own careers depend on.
In The Ed Gein Story, everyone is guilty except
Netflix and the Monster creators themselves — the very people profiting
from this cycle of exploitation. The show even takes aim at other
dramatizations inspired by Gein (Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
Silence of the Lambs, and even Netflix’s own Mindhunter), accusing
them of sensationalism while committing the same sins.
Once again focusing on “handsome white Midwestern killers,” The
Ed Gein Story begins in 1944, where Ed (played by Charlie Hunnam) lives on
a rural Wisconsin farm with his overbearing mother, Augusta (Laurie Metcalf).
He spends his days working the land, frightening women at the local pharmacy
with his strange mannerisms, and secretly indulging in disturbing sexual
rituals. His only confidante is Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son), an eccentric
woman obsessed with true-crime pulp magazines and Nazi war criminal Ilse Koch
(Vicky Krieps). Through her, Ed becomes fascinated with images of brutality — a
ham-fisted metaphor for how media “creates” monsters.
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Unfortunately, Brennan once again ventures into
uncomfortable Holocaust imagery, a recurring misstep dating back to American
Horror Story: Asylum. The series equates Gein’s warped fantasies with
wartime atrocities, a comparison that feels not only tasteless but incoherent.
While Brennan acknowledges that filmmakers like Tobe Hooper drew on Vietnam-era
horrors when creating The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, his own show leans on
Holocaust recreations that feel exploitative rather than insightful.
From there, the story lurches through time — from Ed’s
descent into grave-robbing and murder to Alfred Hitchcock (Tom Hollander)
adapting his life into Psycho against his wife Alma’s (Olivia Williams)
wishes, and later to Anthony Perkins (Joey Pollari) wrestling with the role
that would define him. These historical segments are thinly written; Hitchcock
and Perkins are portrayed as shallow caricatures, and the Chainsaw Massacre
and Silence of the Lambs sequences lack any real commentary. Even the
infamous Buffalo Bill dance is recreated — clumsily and without context —
before a last-minute attempt to insist the show isn’t transphobic.
The timeline is fractured, the pacing sluggish, and the
storytelling erratic. Brennan and director Max Winkler try to weave biography
and meta-commentary, but the result is confusing rather than complex. Real
victims like Evelyn Hartley are turned into half-baked side characters — their
stories warped into bizarre subplots that trivialize their suffering.
Meanwhile, the show dwells obsessively on repetition: Ed
digging up bodies, Ed undressing corpses, Ed masturbating, Ed dancing with
human skin — over and over again. The same creators who scold viewers for their
morbid fascination seem unable to look away themselves. The hypocrisy becomes
almost comical.
Visually, the series is undeniably polished. The Wisconsin
countryside is captured in stark, naturalistic tones, and Mac Quayle’s eerie
score (echoing Bernard Herrmann) adds atmosphere. The performances, too, are
committed — sometimes excessively so. Charlie Hunnam gives an intense,
unnerving portrayal of Gein, playing him as both lost and frighteningly
physical. Laurie Metcalf rages theatrically as his mother, Krieps leans into
pulp villainy, and Lesley Manville gamely battles through ridiculous dialogue. Only
Suzanna Son brings nuance, though it’s unclear whether her performance is
intentionally mysterious or just underwritten.
Ultimately, Monster: The Ed Gein Story proves that
Murphy and Brennan’s “anti-true-crime” stance has reached a dead end. The show
claims to critique the cultural obsession with serial killers while indulging
in every lurid detail it condemns. Its message boils down to a self-satisfied
“We’re not like the others,” even as it wallows in the same sensationalism.
After three entries, Monster remains trapped in its
own reflection — pointing a finger at America’s fascination with murder while
refusing to acknowledge its own complicity. The result is a show that sneers at
its audience for enjoying exactly what it keeps serving them.
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