★★½☆
Netflix’s true-crime anthology takes a chilling turn with Charlie Hunnam in a career-defining role
By Robert [and Cicero]
Netflix’s Monster anthology has never shied away from the darkest corners of America’s true-crime history. Having tackled Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers, the third installment turns to Ed Gein, the “Butcher of Plainfield” whose crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs.
This is no easy territory. The crimes are grotesque, the mythology well-worn. Yet Monster: The Ed Gein Story attempts to unpick not just what Gein did, but what made him — with mixed, if memorable, results.
Hunnam’s transformation
At the centre is Charlie Hunnam, a curious but ultimately gripping casting choice. Known for rugged leading-man roles, he strips himself bare here — physically diminished, voice altered, mannerisms jittery. It is a performance of disquieting fragility. He never lets Gein become a caricature, but the very charisma that makes him watchable risks shading the monster with too much allure.
Shadows of Augusta
Laurie Metcalf delivers a ferocious turn as Gein’s domineering mother, Augusta, the fire-and-brimstone figure whose shadow engulfs her son. Their relationship provides the series with its most electric, and most unsettling, moments: a portrait of repression curdling into obsession.
Fact versus fiction
The show is stylishly mounted, and its atmosphere of rural dread is palpable. But it takes liberties with history, dramatizing disputed episodes and occasionally leaning on invention where the truth is already ghastly enough. In its most lurid moments, the series veers close to myth-making rather than interrogation.
Verdict
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is at once compelling and conflicted. It wants to horrify, to psychoanalyse, and to comment on the horror industry Gein unwittingly birthed. Not all of those ambitions align. Yet when it works — when Hunnam vanishes into the skin of America’s most infamous grave-robber — the series grips like a nightmare you cannot shake.
Ed Gein Netflix brilliant adaptation
