The original post: /r/television by /u/SatisfactionMean3301 on 2025-10-10 18:27:53+00:00.

I don’t get the hate for the Monster: The Ed Gein Story, and frankly, am not sure it actually exists outside the insular world of Rotten Tomatoes and Reddit, which is a spurious source at best.

I admit to not being a fan of Ryan Murphy. The way he presents American Horror Story, as a gradual devolution from true horror to self-effacing musical satire is the definition of self indulgence. I watched the first three seasons and gave up.

Still, I found Monster: The Ed Gein Story a fascinating glimpse into not only an antiquated “product of their time” psychotic mind, but an op-ed piece devoted to dissecting the American psychosis of our day. Our obsession with serial killers. Our stubbornly incurable religious guilt. Our inability to understand that what we create in life, for better or worse, inevitably leads to more of the same energy.

True, like any of his other projects, he has an ADHD approach to filmmaking and jumps around the timeline, and multiple character POVs, as if he were writing a novel, or perhaps a video game. Yes, there are obviously episodes of surrealism, both admitted (Gein was a schizophrenic and it’s plausible that his worldview was distorted with celebrity correspondence that never happened, if not realistic) and farcical comedy (the ending seemed a bit long-winded, and theatrical, as if leaving a haunted house of cinema bloodshed).

But the truth is, people are obsessing over ridiculous details. Of course, the show was very loosely based on a true story. There were many added scenes, fanfiction, and gonzo moments of self-parody that were not the truth. But the truth is not sensationalism. The truth tends to be boring, anticlimactic, and not what we wanted to hear. The truth would not make for an entertaining Netflix series. Perhaps a documentary, but not true crime entertainment.

In contrast to all the other Ed Gein projects (including a terrible HBO 2000 movie that had no idea what to do with the material except to play Ed Gein as a surly Al Bundy-ish grouch), Monster is a grotesque psychological horror that delves into the filth of violence, and what it does to the human psyche - and the people who live through the aftermath of sensational headlines.

Director Max Winkler and writer Ian Brennan loved exploring how Hollywood’s love affair of Ed Gein, and the monsters he conjured in showbusiness’s collective imagination. We’ve seen Hitchcock dramatized before, but not Tobe Hooper - and that was a big laugh. Especially if you’ve read about Tobe and his disconnection from reality.

The whole thing felt like an indictment of our serial killer obsessed culture, at the expense of empathy. True, one could call that unnecessary, done-to-death, and ham-fisted commentary.

But the true discovery in Monster was in Charlie Hunnam’s performance. Whether this was method acting or just blatant imitation is irrelevant. He created an iconic horror figure. Not quite the calculating killer that was Hannibal Lector, not the simpleton that was Forrest Gump. But something in between - a soft-spoken man, tormented by voices and religious brainwashing, but somehow both lucid and confused. This was a very difficult part to play, not only for what the director wanted to show, but what turmoil was happening inside.

I haven’t see any of the actor’s other projects. But he did convince me of this version of Ed Gein, surrealist perhaps, but every bit as real as Norman Bates ever was.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story will probably not be remembered for advancing any movements, or for depicting reality in any shape or form.

But tell me, when has Hollywood ever been honest or accurate about the stories it tells? I can’t think of a single Oscar-winning film that didn’t take great liberties with the source material to tell one director’s perspective of events - not the true story as it happened.

The series will be remembered, probably not for Ed Gein himself, since that character remains impenetrable even after Charlie did his damndest to get inside his head.

But as yet another attempt to empathize and humanize “monsters” of the human race, a reminder that the evil people we fear the most, are in some ways like all of us. That is what Murphy did with his Monster series. Dahmer was brilliantly unnerving. Gein was fantastical and outrageous. Menendez was so grounded in reality, it became a bit of a bore.

But overall, I thought it was horrific entertainment, and worth watching at least once.