After Monster: The Ed Gein Story debuted on Netflix on Friday, it quickly rose to second place on the streaming platforms’ charts with 12.2 million views in its first week.
The true crime series is the third season of the Monster anthology co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan. Like every season, it follows a serial killer (or two). But this time, the series centers on Ed Gein, a murderer known for killing women, wearing their skin and faces, and digging up graves. It stars Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) in the main role.
And while the previous two seasons, Dahmer – Monster: The story of Jeffrey Dahmer And Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendezreceived widespread criticism for their allegedly sensational portrayal of murder victims, Ed Gein also provokes some debate. It currently holds a 20 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but its audience score more than doubles that, at 54 percent.
Before the show aired on the streamer, Hunnam said The Hollywood Reporter what he hopes, people focus on whether they criticize the show. “If people are forced to talk about it and think about it, I hope they will actually be compelled to watch the show,” Hunnam said. “What I hope and really trust is that this is a very heartfelt exploration of the human condition and why this boy did what he did.” He also added, “I never felt like we were sensationalizing. I never felt on set that we were doing anything gratuitous or for shock value. All to try to tell this story as honestly as possible.”
As Hunnam mentions, the series depicts Ed’s mental health issues as an undiagnosed schizophrenic. “Ed is at its core a story about mental illness. It was as important for us to show the horror of his inner life and his sort of prison that his brain was trapped in to show that horror as it was this or that murder itself,” Brennan said. THR.
Read on to find out what the public thinks of Monster: The Ed Gein Story.
Cosmopolitan United Kingdom responded to the moment in the show, where Ed looks at the camera and says they’re the ones who can’t look away, writing: “Monster: The Ed Gein Story seems like a critique of our desensitization. The scene dealt with Ed’s influence on the media and how this scene was a response to people obsessed with true crime. Hunnam said THR what he hopes this scene represents: “Was it Ed Gein who was abused and left in solitary confinement and who suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness and left and it manifested itself in quite horrific ways? Or was the monster the legion of filmmakers who took inspiration from his life and sensationalized it for entertainment and darkened the American psyche in the process?” he said. “Is Ed Gein the monster of this show, or is Hitchcock the monster of the show? Or are we the monster of the show because we watch it?”
The New York Times also added to the appeal for true crime, writing, “It makes sense that prestige television would eventually come for Gein. Viewers have a seemingly insatiable appetite for stories, true and false, centered on the most outrageous aspects of human nature—an appetite that Murphy, with his American horror story, American crime story And Monster franchises, made a late career sharpening.
United Kingdom Times wrote: “Gein’s story becomes blurred with the public’s dismayed reactions to Psychology ” in a not-uninteresting way as Hitch questions what he started: “The audience has changed and I’ve changed them. Like pigs that tasted blood. Or who has tasted macabre true crime. Another interpretation of all this could be that Murphy is turning on us to play along with criticism that his work can be exploitative. We are the ones who want this sort of thing; it shows us that it has always been this way and invites us to enjoy it again, slaves to our worst instincts. Or is it so smart?
A Rotten Tomatoes viewer wrote that the series does indeed mix emotions. “I loved it, with some great Charlie Hunnam characters, he was brilliant as Ed Gein, evoked a lot of emotion, dislike, hatred, frustration and in the end it was a real mix of fact and artistic license, the connections to the influenced films and other serial killers, I understood it and I liked the way they did it, I thought it worked really well.”
The Guardian gave a harsher view: “The Monster the ultimate statement of the series: that we live in a sick and sad world and therefore we should show the sick and sad things that happen in it. Maybe this has some value. However, we hope that Murphy and Brennan and everyone else involved in this dubious project would be honest about what they care about. If they want to revel in the blood and dirt of American life, so be it. Many people will happily jump into the grime with them. But it is rather irritating to hide this indecent fascination under pseudo-academic analysis. It is possible that the Story of Ed Gein awkwardly grasps at a higher meaning simply because it has to fill eight hours of programming. And yet, it’s hard not to see a more sinister and exonerating motivation. Whatever the reason, the end product is crude where it tries to be elegant, exploitative where it plays on compassion.
Time The magazine talked about Adeline and Ed’s relationship, writing: “Adeline is interested in the most horrific documents of human experience available; she resents her proximity to a man who kills people and defiles corpses. Yet her relationship with Ed is entirely selfish. After his arrest, she disguises herself to give interviews in which she pretends they were just acquaintances and tries to change the subject to talk about his own questionable charms and talents. Like a fan. on her way to CrimeCon, she derives vicarious pleasure from the pain of real people but has no empathy for either the victims or the tortured villain. Adeline is a precursor to the hordes we see flocking to Ed once he becomes a celebrity: the line of onlookers who visit his house and bid on his goods, without realizing that the man running the auction is the son of a victim; patrons of sold-out screenings of William Castle’s exploitative “sexual horror” films; serial killers from the 70s and 80s who were inspired by his methods. Adeline is also a point of comparison for artists influenced by Ed.”
Time, continued by saying: “Monster has, itself, been the target of criticism from people like the Menendezes and the families of Dahmer’s victims, who feel that their traumas were exploited for sensationalism rather than sublimated into high art. I suppose it’s possible that Brennan identifies more with Castle than Hitchcock. In this case, Ed Gein is also a series that hates itself.
Despite some difficult takes, some viewers praised the cast’s acting skills and that they were entertaining. “Ed Gein’s story was a good watch! The acting was brilliant, yes, sometimes the flashbacks were confusing, but in the end it was a brilliant series that tied together nicely at the end. It really made me uncomfortable, like it’s supposed to do. A 5 star series all the way; looking forward to the next monster series,” one user wrote on Rotten Tomatoes.
Another user wrote: “A very interesting take on Ed’s life, his personality and his untreated mental health issues. The way they created the storylines of Ed Gein’s real story was such a bold and heartbreaking way to show a broken human being in his darkest moments with schizophrenia, trauma, childhood abuse, mental illness (which he suffered alone with all this) and the monster that this inevitably led him to be. Truly fascinating. “
