MONSTER: THE ED GEIN STORY (2025)

Multiple things can be true at once. Just ask Ed Gein. He’s been dead since 1984, so that’s not possible, nonetheless his perspective is the subject of the third installment of the Monster anthology series, following Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022) and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024).  And the reviews have not been kind. Ryan Murphy’s latest offering Monster: The Ed Gein Story (2025) has been called: “disturbing”, “exploitative” and “so gruesome it goes beyond entertainment”. While some if not all of us agree that these are accurate laments, I’d argue that it is equally true that this season is expertly crafted, acted and thoroughly engrossing. I mean, horror aficionados and most film enthusiasts have seen Psycho (1960), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and it is humbling and dare I say respectful to the horrors of life and Gein’s victims to dig deeper into the maniac who inspired so many legendary pop-culture horror villains. Murphy and Ian Brennan (who wrote all of the episodes and directed two) explore this awkward union of the psychotic and entertainment. There’s a thrilling whirl of disconcertment being a moth on the wall vouyering horror masterpieces being pieced together in tandem with Gein’s dismembering of his (sometimes) very real victims. Most particularly, the second episode Sick as Your Secrets, with its subplot featuring Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins that aims to explain how the news, including photojournalism surrounding the Second World War war and it’s atrocities, permanently altered our collective conscious and birthed a zeal for movies involving suppressed depravities. It doesn’t shy away from Hitchcock’s creepy kinks and reasoning for casting Perkins. Episodes three and four, The Babysitter and Green, also swerve periodically to the development of Tobe Hooper’s horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, notably Leatherface’s origin story being born from tales of the real-life boogeyman Gein, told to him by his uncle when he was a kid. It’s a jumble, particularly when Gein uses a proxy for his mother’s corpse to help smash a woman’s head with a hammer, just as the mallet lands in the making of an infamous The Texas Chainsaw Massacre scene. It’s unsettling inspiration was a highlight for me and what makes Monster: The Ed Gein Story so enthralling for a horror fan. Though, I would have liked for it to have also delved further into the creation of The Silence of the Lambs, but this a small criticism. I would have also preferred less creative license taken with the facts surrounding Gein himself (e.g. his engagement in necrophilia and cannibalism and the number of his murders), but these do little to sensationalize an already intense and terrifying biography. Which brings me to Charlie Hunnam’s fearless embodiment of the man and the imprints which assisted in creating such a monster. As a whole, I’ve heard the series being referred to as “scattered”, but like his head, the narrative intertwines with what might be real and what might not be real as a nod to the experience of a psychotic break. Hunnam delivers on being both feared and pitied; an uncomfortable and facinating mix, just ask everyone who voted for Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker (2019) Oscar win. Another standout is Lesley Manville as Bernice Holden, the lonely, broken hardware store owner who falls for Gein. Again, there’s no proof that the two had a relationship but their interlude makes for great TV and exploration of outcasts and the extreme desire to connect, bringing a demented lightness and dare I say sweetness to Gein and the show. It’s a trip that you can’t quite believe, is not altogether factual, but aims to explore the unholy origins of evil, mental health and Gien’s undeniable legacy. True to you or not.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH

Additional musings: One of the best series on offer today. I will be turning in for the next installment, Monster: The Legend of Lizzie Borden (2026)