Worse than trash: this Netflix true-crime drama is repellent

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Monster: The Ed Gein Story ★

Dreadful in enough ways to be repellent rather than mere trash, the third season of Netflix’s American true-crime anthology chose the wrong monster.

A rural odd-job man raised by a religious zealot mother, Ed Gein found infamy in 1957 when the discovery of a decapitated murder victim also revealed the nightmarish trophies he procured from female corpse snatching: severed genitalia, skulls as eating bowls, and face masks made from human skin.

In terms of monstrousness and media attention, the legally insane Gein was the first serial killer of the 20th century. But he had little personality, zero purpose, and provided no real illumination on his crimes. Whether through arrogance or misjudgement, no one involved in Monster has taken heed of that. The result is a garish, wildly unfocused, and fundamentally dishonest attempt to make eight episodes of prestige horror. The season’s writer and co-creator, Ian Brennan, has done fine work on Monster previously, but he should be excommunicated for this.

The mistakes are manifold. Start with Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) as Gein. An actor whose best trait is his charisma delivers a one-note performance as a mewling weirdo with a high-pitched voice. Opening in 1945, as the horrors of the Holocaust are becoming public, the sexual deviancy is instantaneous, with the dramatised murders following quickly.

“Women are sin,” howls his mother, Augusta (Laurie Metcalf), while the period detail is alternately grim and glossy. Neither feels authentic.

It soon becomes apparent that The Ed Gein Story can’t stay focused on Ed Gein. We get Alfred Hitchcock (Tom Hollander), depicted as a peeper like Gein, using him as inspiration for 1960s Psycho.

Ilse Koch (Vicky Krieps), the murderous wife of a Nazi concentration commander, who Gein obsesses over, is brought to life, providing a zone of disinterest. The thesis is that Gein changed popular culture and America, but there’s little thought beyond recreating scenes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs.

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story notably examined how its subject exploited law enforcement prejudice to openly prey on minorities; here, there’s just ludicrous additions.

A local woman who knew Gein and contested the media’s reporting of their romance, Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son), is depicted as a love interest and bloodthirsty supporter. The creative gambits are as satisfying as embalming fluid.

Pointless hallucinations proliferate and the need to shock is obvious: Gein dances to a record and flirts with a corpse. “Leading me on, are you?” he coos before the necrophilia begins.

It’s topped by a late, heinous effort to fictitiously rehabilitate the now-medicated schizophrenic, who, in a sequence duplicating Netflix’s Mindhunter, offers law enforcement help in catching 1970s serial killer Ted Bundy. It’s the last of too many egregious errors.