Netflix’s Monster series, helmed by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, has courted controversy since its inception, provoking a new wave of discourse surrounding the ethics of true crime media with the release of each season.
As its title suggests, each season explores real life murderers whose crimes haunt our cultural consciousness. This exploration involves an attempt to examine the sociopolitical climate that informed both the perpetration of and reactions to the crimes, and it always involves centering male killers that have already been mythologized.
Mythologizing the truth.
The first season, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, maintained a veneer of thoughtfulness throughout. It put forth an approximation of care toward the victims and their families, all of whom refused to participate in the making of the show. During Season 2, Monster: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, this veneer fell away to reveal the show for what it had always been: exploitation. In Monster: The Ed Gein Story, Murphy and Brennan embrace their worst impulses to produce the most unconscionable season yet.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is more interested in the myth of Ed Gein rather than following historical record. Nearly everything in the show pertaining to the crimes is fictionalized, especially Gein’s relationships to the women in his life. The narrative places the blame for his actions on these women: a cruel mother, a demented girlfriend, and a wanton older woman.
The show also seemingly condemns the film directors who would later take inspiration from Gein in their work: Alfred Hitchcock with Psycho, Tobe Hooper with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Jonathan Demme with The Silence of the Lambs. This condemnation is rife with hypocrisy considering the fact that all of those films are works of fiction that never purported to contain any truths regarding Ed Gein. Hitchcock, Hooper, and Demme never mischaracterized real people. In Monster, no memories are left undesecrated.
Fantasy vs. reality.
The cinematography in this show is consistently good but used to vulgar effect. This season features predictable visual and sonic references that grow increasingly grating, evoking the work of the directors the writers seek to criticize. This makes the tone incoherent and consistently undermines the very occasional moments of thoughtfulness. The apparent indecision of the writers when it comes to which events are occurring in Gein’s mind and which are meant to reflect reality also adds to the incoherent tone.
Everything about the season is so heightened that fantasy and reality blend until the narrative feels indecipherable. If you have seen the films that are referenced you can look forward to moments of empty recognition with no further analysis, and a bizarre treatment of real life criminals as characters in a sort of extended cinematic universe.
One-dimensional performances can’t save it, either.
The performances in Monster are also consistently good across the seasons, but this season feels like the weakest in that regard. The one-dimensional nature of the performances is a result of the one-dimensional writing, but it is a disappointment nonetheless. Charlie Hunnam’s performance as Ed Gein is mostly one-note and bogged down by the voice he chose to use for the role. Hunnam gives his best performance in Episode 7, “Ham Radio,” which is easily the best episode of the season. It is the writers at their most restrained and Gein at his most human, allowing Hunnam’s performance to feel its most honest.
Laurie Metcalf is also one-note as Augusta Gein, written to embody the archetype of the overbearing mother. Suzanna Son does her best with Adeline Watkins, a bizarrely written character seemingly meant to evoke a certain subset of female true crime fans. While obviously misogynistic, this commentary also falls flat since this series helmed by men is at the forefront of presenting these murderers in sexualized ways.
Overall.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is the worst of a bad lot, but the popularity of the show endures. Perhaps the best thing to do is to treat the show the way we should treat the killers it further immortalizes, which is to deny it infamy. Discussing a thing only serves to further legitimize it, and something so artless deserves no analysis. Let dead things lie.
REVIEW RATING
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Monster: The Ed Gein Story - 0/10
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