Season 1 of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s anthology planted its flag with Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a mega-hit that doubled as a cultural lightning rod. Season 2 pivoted from gore to headlines with Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, trading freezer-chill horror for the heat of a 1990s media circus.
Now, if you like your October viewing messy, moral, and impossible to look away from, Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story is your weekend fight. It’s sitting at 60% with critics and 74% with audiences (as of Oct. 3)—and parts of it were shot in and around Chicago, with local locations doubling for 1950s Wisconsin. That snowbound Midwest noir vibe? Some of it’s ours.
Across eight episodes, the third Monster installment tracks Ed Gein (Charlie Hunnam) from a brutally repressed farm life under his mother, Augusta (Laurie Metcalf), into the crimes that later inspired Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs and Texas Chain Saw. And while Gein’s confirmed murders number just two, his grave-robbing and skin-trophy depravity did the rest, fueling a pop-culture myth machine the show explores as it intercuts his inner world, a fraught romance with town outcast Adeline (Suzanna Son), noir stylization, and a controversial WWII thread.
But what are the critics saying?
The reactions read like a heated post-screening in a cramped festival bar. One corner’s all in: Hindustan Times’ Samarth Goyal calls it “the best Monster yet… disturbing and complex,” the kind of watch that leaves you “questioning if you’re the monster for watching.” Across the room, the mood darkens. EJ Moreno sighs into his drink: “To say that Monster: The Ed Gein Story is one of the most unfocused of Ryan Murphy’s productions is quite a thing indeed,” stamping it with a ★1.5/4.
Then comes the moral thunderclap. The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan isn’t nibbling around the edges—she says it’s “nothing but a voyeuristic pandering to the basest instincts of viewers.” On the craft-and-choices front, Karina Adelgaard clocks the show’s big swing: Murphy and Brennan “opted for a WWII element to highlight his inner world.” Sometimes it plays; sometimes it “become[s] rather kitsch and wild… won’t be for everyone.”
Variety’s Aramide Tinubu threads the needle with the structural complaint: “Graphically violent and too unfocused,” with episodes that feel “baffling, graphic and endless,” and a season that “falls apart because it lacks a central focus.” Put together, the chorus says this: if you want audacity, mood, and moral queasiness, there’s a show here; if you need discipline, restraint, and a tight thesis, the myth of Gein may sprawl right past your breaking point.
Even the pans tend to praise the performances—Hunnam’s tightly wound lead and Metcalf’s ice-cold matriarch—and the craft: wintry cinematography, production design that nails Midwest claustrophobia, and a score that keeps the dread humming. Where reviews diverge is focus and ethics: some see a provocative, stylized character study; others see a maximalist true-crime freak show.
As for the audience comments, they read like a group text that no one could mute. Christopher F opened with a sigh: “It is just okay. Kind of boring. Went on WAY TOO LONG.” Scott F pushed back, loyal to the franchise if not the facts, “If you love the first two [Monster] series, then you will love this series.” Somewhere in the middle of the scrum, Mason C tossed in a note of chaotic honesty: “My only complaint is Charlie Hunnam is too hot to play a serial killer.”
Then the extremes arrived. Paige W called it “a wild and disturbing fever dream… well worth it,” while Isobel B zeroed in on the oddest detail: “Loved the first 30 seconds with the cow.” On the other end, the fidelity police showed up with sirens on. Sier D: “Completely cannot recommend this… unfaithful… fabricate[d] entire murders…” And Amy M slammed the door: “What, the actual Ed Gein[sic] story didn’t have enough material… 99% of this didn’t happen… hard to watch.”
Taken together, the Oct. 3 snapshot plays like the show itself: polarizing, messy, and impossible not to have an opinion about.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is currently streaming on Netflix.
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