Reviews
‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ Is a Messy Marriage of Horror and True Crime [Review]
Spoiler Warning: This review digs into major plot points.
Most horror fans are familiar with the story of Ed Gein, whether they realize it or not. Also known as the Butcher of Plainfield, the Wisconsin farmer inspired some of the genre’s most disturbing monsters. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins, Psycho), Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine, The Silence of the Lambs), and Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) all trace their roots back to this reclusive criminal despite significant differences in each of their stories. The real Ed Gein was famously shy and known around town as a little strange. That all changed on November 21st, 1957, when his rural farmhouse was searched in connection with the disappearance of local businesswoman Bernice Worden. Authorities found a derelict home littered with human remains and decorated with furnishings made from dead bodies. Gein was ultimately convicted of Worden’s murder along with nine counts of grave robbery, and spent the rest of his life in a mental institution.
Infuriatingly vague about his motivations, Gein’s shocking transgressions spoke for themselves, opening the door for amateur sleuths and an army of armchair therapists seeking to understand the “Plainfield Ghoul.” Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho was published just seventeen months later, the first in a long line of genre creators to incorporate elements of Gein’s sordid story while leaving the man’s true nature on the cutting room floor. The latest season of Ryan Murphy’s Monster attempts to reclaim Gein’s legacy alongside the films based on his life. Directed by Max Winkler and Ian Brennan (who also penned the sprawling script), Monster: The Ed Gein Story weaves together the creation of these legendary films in addition to messy explorations of their ongoing appeal. Grisly reproductions of the horrors discovered in his dingy home create an overwhelming atmosphere of depravity, but Brennan and Winkler play fast and loose with established fact and conflate objective truth with fantasy. While making a solid case for Gein’s place as a godfather of horror and true crime, the eight-episode season presents a confusing depiction of the man himself.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Laurie Metcalf as Augusta Gein in episode 304 of Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Cr. Courtesy Of Netflix © 2025
We open on Ed (Charlie Hunnam) gently milking a cow and meticulously performing the duties of a farmhand. Moments later, he peeks into his neighbor’s bedroom, then engages in erotic asphyxiation while masturbating in women’s lingerie. Interrupted by his cruel mother Augusta (Laurie Metcalf), Ed soon stands naked in the family living room while she berates him with scripture and scorn. This sequence proves to be a microcosm of Monster’s Ed: a well-meaning son abused by his mother, who equates sexual arousal with violence and destruction. Drawn from reports of Gein’s abusive childhood, we watch as Augusta’s voice overshadows all future interactions and ultimately drives him to kill and dismember women who resemble her.
Murphy made waves by casting the famously attractive Hunnam as the unremarkable Wisconsin farmer, but Brennan and Winkler have taken pains to modify his appearance. A prosthetic growth over one eye, retro haircut, and protruding ears combine with a high-pitched vocal affectation and thick Wisconsin accent to distance the actor from his tough-guy appeal. Hunnam deftly navigates this complicated role, successfully embodying both the sensitive man struggling with an undiagnosed mental illness and the ruthless killer dehumanizing his female victims while worshiping their body parts. At times, he steps in for Gein’s cinematic counterparts, reenacting Psycho’s infamous shower scene and chasing victims with a roaring chainsaw as in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But it’s his mirroring of Buffalo Bill that proves most problematic.
From the season’s earliest moments, we watch Ed fetishize women’s lingerie. Scenes in which the handsome actor seductively dances in bra and panties lead to a more sinister version of this benign kink as he dons a busty torso made from human skin and a human mask topped with long, flowing hair. Wearing the upper half of this woman suit, Ed then tucks and dances in the mirror, delighting in his gruesome appearance. Brennan and Winkler juxtapose this disturbing image with a reenactment of an infamous scene from The Silence of the Lambs in which Buffalo Bill gives a similar performance after working on his own skin suit. While clearly meant to connect the dots between Gein’s true crime story and the film’s inspiration, this combination continues a damaging legacy of conflating trans people with violent criminals. There is no evidence to suggest that Gein fetishized women’s undergarments, and his “deviance” was likely a symptom of untreated schizophrenia. We will later hear a doctor explain the nuances of Ed’s mental illness, adding a second diagnosis of gynephilia, but only after several episodes of this troubling imagery.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Tom Hollander as Alfred Hitchcock in episode 302 of Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Cr. Courtesy Of Netflix © 2025
Winkler and Brennan are more successful in exploring the aftermath of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. As Ed begins digging up bodies, we travel forward a few years to a Hollywood table in which Bloch (Ethan Sandler) dazzles a rapt Hitchcock (Tom Hollander) with psychobabble meant to explain Gein’s murky motives. We then cut to a young Anthony Perkins (Joey Pollari) preparing for the role he hopes will make him a household name. But a troubling visit to the set leads to second thoughts as he’s confronted with jarring recreations of Gein’s crimes. Alluding to Perkins’ relationship with actor Tab Hunter (Jackie Kay), Hitchcock tells the vulnerable young actor that he was cast specifically because his closeted queerness helps him understand both the “monstrous” Gein and his cinematic counterpart, who murders while wearing his mother’s dress. This upsetting moment forces us to contend with the film’s effect on the queer community and the cost of becoming forever known as the infamous Norman Bates.
As Ed begins wearing the faces of his victims, we meet an idealistic Tobe Hooper (Will Brill) and watch as an obsession with ‘the woman skinner of Wisconsin’ grows into one of the most celebrated horror films of all time. In 70’s parlance, the crass yet insightful director explains that he is making “the movie this country deserves,” while explaining Leatherface’s iconic trio of human skin masks. Horror fans will love this painstakingly accurate peek behind the scenes of the genre-defining classic, along with a gleeful dramatization of Hooper’s inspirational fantasy of using a display chainsaw to cut through an endless line of holiday shoppers.
Missing from the conversation, however, is Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs. Aside from the aforementioned dance, we get very little of this equally influential film. Unlike Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, we do not meet the director or novelist Thomas Harris, who wrote the award-winning film’s source material. There is no attempt to unpack the characterization of Buffalo Bill and the lasting harm to the trans community. The only explanation of Gein’s own sexual identity lies in Ed’s imagined conversation with his hero Christine Jorgensen (Alanna Darby), one of the first Americans to successfully undergo gender confirmation surgery.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story. (L to R) Suzanna Son as Adelina, Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein in episode 302 of Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Cr. Courtesy Of Netflix © 2025
Also frustrating are the season’s glaring inaccuracies. We have no way to prove whether Gein engaged in sexual necrophilia and cannibalism—Gein himself has denied these accusations—but Brennan and Winkler present both as fact with extended scenes in which Ed defiles a corpse and brings human meat to a neighborly dinner. Cinematic depictions of his two confirmed victims are jarringly different from their provable personas, and Ed’s relationship with girlfriend Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son) has been wildly expanded. While these narrative choices could be excused as a version of women seen through Ed’s tainted eyes, we don’t see a contrast to reality, and must take these outlandish versions as fact. And that’s not to mention multiple sequences following Nazi war criminal Ilse Koch (Vicky Krieps), whose rumored practice of creating lampshades out of human skin reportedly inspired Ed’s own grisly hobbies.
Despite these indulgent fantasies—or perhaps because of them—Monster: The Ed Gein Story is genuinely terrifying. We watch as Ed stalks, kidnaps, and murders a series of women, drawing a direct line to his influence on the slasher subgenre. A ghastly facsimile of the notorious farmhouse shows a bowl constructed from a woman’s skull, a shade adorned with human lips, and a belt made from a series of severed nipples. The camera lingers on a meticulously detailed recreation of the decapitated and dressed out corpse found hanging in Gein’s barn, as well as his horrific woman suit. But perhaps most effective is the corpse meant to represent the undead Augusta. Heightening the shock of Psycho’s famous reveal, this corpse continues to rot as Ed totes her around the house, creating two-sided conversations. Less salacious period details create an icy world of 50s glamor interwoven with the harshness of a rural town.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein in episode 304 of Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Cr. Courtesy Of Netflix © 2025
Previous seasons of Monster have sought to humanize notorious murderers while highlighting their often forgotten victims and exploring the impact of their disturbing crimes. Season 3 feels mainly concerned with presenting Ed as a sympathetic if admittedly dangerous man who sparked a sea change in American pop culture. With loving attention to visual detail and graphic depictions of Ed’s documented acts, Brennan and Winkler pull us into his macabre Wisconsin farmhouse and ask us why we can’t seem to look away. Are we complicit in monsterizing a lonely and misunderstood man who simply longed for a mother’s love? Or are we justified in continuing a cultural fascination that birthed modern horror and true crime? Monster: The Ed Gein Story feels like a love letter to fans of these popular genres and an argument that they are intrinsically connected through the story of this strange man. Though the case may be sound and admittedly entertaining, the facts get lost along the way.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is now streaming on Netflix.
Reviews
‘Cape Fear’ Redefines A Cutthroat Classic & Turns The American Dream Into A Psychological Nightmare [Review]
Hollywood has been stuck in a trend where a recognizable property — any recognizable property — holds more value than an original idea. This has led to a trend where a slew of acclaimed films have transitioned over to television and become limited series, because why not?
Which has led to a very mixed bag of results that’s usually viewed as a hollow exercise in IP renewal that’s become a growing cliche that’s something to mock. Dead Ringers, Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent, and even The Birds are just some of the most recent titles in the movie-to-limited series pipeline. Admittedly, this formula can still work. It just needs to actually have not only a point of view, but a point, otherwise it’s destined to disappear into the vast streaming abyss.
Cape Fear definitely has a point of view and is well aware that it’s the fourth proper adaptation of this story — fifth if The Simpsons’ masterful “Cape Feare” parody is included. It’s an adaptation that’s not only aware of its past’s baggage, but intentionally embraces it and uses it to its advantage. Nick Antosca’s Cape Fear is so exciting because it functions as a remix of every version of this story — the ’60s film, Martin Scorsese’s ’90s remake, and John D. MacDonald’s original novel, The Executioners — to create this glorious amalgamation of the narrative. It’s not unlike what was done with Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal series and how it remixed the breadth of Thomas Harris’ works and their cinematic adaptations.
This approach is most effective when certain iconic scenes from the ’90s film are recontextualized and given to different characters in order to make grander thematic statements. It’s a really striking approach that reflects the generational ripples and overlap between these adaptations, yet it’s never distracting or ostentatious to anyone who is experiencing this story for the first time. It helps this series feel different from the deluge of forgettable adaptations that are flooding the market.
On paper, Antosca is the perfect showrunner to tell this story. He has an impressive body of work to pull from that includes horror series like Channel Zero, Hannibal, and Brand New Cherry Flavor, but also lots of true-crime titles like The Act, A Friend of the Family, and Candy. This series falls squarely within these two extremes as it blurs the lines between these genres and styles of horror storytelling. It’s Big Little Lies on bath salts. Cape Fear perhaps doesn’t need to exist, but it’s still a hell of a terrifying experience that has something timely to say.
Horror is full of stories in which one bad day is all it takes to break someone and turn them into a completely different person. Cape Fear isn’t doing exactly this. It’s more of a psychological waterboarding until the target’s sense of self is eroded to rubble. However, it takes the kernel of this idea and expands it onto the pristine ideal of the picturesque American family. It plays with the self-aware realization that the stories we tell are not necessarily what we think they are.
It’s a story about forgiveness, salvation, and revenge that blows up the Bowden family when a violent offender, Max Cady (Javier Bardem), is released from prison and systematically sets his sights on the people he holds accountable. Anna and Tom Bowden (Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson), the married couple who represented his case in court, receive a rude awakening when Cady’s psychological torture tour begins. Cape Fear, as a property, is most famously known for being the ultimate cat-and-mouse psychological thriller. This rendition culminates in such an explosive climax that’s right out of a slasher film.
Antosca was involved with an unproduced Friday the 13th reboot draft back in 2015, and there are certainly moments in which Max Cady moves with the hulking intensity of Jason Voorhees. So much of what makes all this work rests on Bardem’s complex performance. He’s very careful not to just copy Robert Mitchum or Robert De Niro’s versions of Cady, while he also taps into a terrifying intensity that feels completely different from what he brought forward with No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.
Apple TV’s new series also introduces a mental injury to Cady that adds psychological fractures that pull him between different versions of events as he struggles to grasp the truth. It’s an element that’s not exactly necessary and often feels like a convenient obstacle that can be activated whenever necessary. However, it allows for some creative visual flourishes and more opportunities for Bardem to get lost in Cady’s complexities.
Opposite Bardem’s Cady, Adams and Wilson do some of their best work as Anna and Tom. Anna is much more front and center than Tom, and Cape Fear is really Adams and Bardem’s time to shine. Wilson still does amazing, understated work, especially whenever the rug gets pulled out from under him regarding someone in his family. The visceral, brutal violence that Cady introduces to the Bowden family hits hard and highlights the anger and intensity that’s fundamental to this story.
What Cape Fear does best is its enlightening deconstruction of the ideal American family, how much work it takes to preserve such a pure thing, and the lengths that people go when they feel like the sanctity of this union is under fire. All it takes is for one of these foundational pillars to weaken before the whole unit becomes compromised. It moves the damage and pressure from one family member to the next as everyone struggles, and it’s unclear what will be left of this family when all is said and done.
This dynamic makes Cape Fear’s story so much more layered and interesting than if the series were just focused on Cady, Anna, and Tom, rather than making their children as much of a priority. Each member of the Bowden family experiences their own obstacles and arcs, although Natalie (Lily Collias) and Zack’s (Joe Anders) storylines are often the most grating. It all boils down to forgiveness, identity, and wanting to be perceived as the person we think we are, versus how we’re viewed by the public, and the dangerous dissonance that can exist between these separate selves.
These ideas are at their most potent when Cape Fear taps into the growing paranoia that bubbles up to the surface and becomes unbearable, so that even the littlest action is triggering. These moments are usually captured through a more erratic filming style that ramps up the tension for both the characters and the audience, unsure of what will strike and when.
Cape Fear never struggles to create uncomfortable setpieces where the anxiety just crescendos and hangs over the scene. On this note, the series’ musical score really captures the perfect aesthetic. It immediately evokes the suspenseful power of the previous Cape Fear films whenever Bernard Herrmann’s virtuosic original theme kicks in. It’s magic every single time.
Antosca delivers an exhilarating update to a classic thriller that pushes its source material to exciting, new places that justify its existence. It’s an exciting story that’s full of terrifying performances and cataclysmic consequences. Admittedly, Cape Fear could have been shortened to eight episodes rather than ten. There are a few plot threads that feel unnecessary and artificially expanded upon, but every episode is still an adrenaline-pumping experience.
If nothing else, it reminds audiences why Cape Fear is such an evergreen story that’s lasted the test of time and will continue to unnerve and get under the skin of whole new generations.
The 10-episode series will make its global debut on June 5 with a two-episode premiere on Apple TV, followed by new episodes every Friday through July 31, 2026.
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