REVIEW - An Inconsistent Horror Story

“Monster: The Ed Gein Story” is not a regular true crime biography. It is made to be deeply psychological and visually arresting. The show dives into hallucinatory territory to depict Gein’s deteriorating mental state, using his dreamlike sequences, broken timelines, and mangled visual metaphors. These choices aim to give viewers a look into Gein’s schizophrenia and deeply rooted trauma that comes from his abusive mother, and his isolation from everyone else where he lives. Also everyone seems to take a specific dislike in the main character’s odd and creepy, high-pitched voice.

There wasn’t much of a story to the show itself, but the way they were able to fictionalize it enough to make it worth the watch. With every victim in the show they sort of insulted them, whether they were real or assumed. The lines in the show were clearly based on the regular Hollywood storylines. You can basically tell that most of the stuff that was portrayed in the show was made up. Especially in episode six “Slanderous and untrue” was so far fetched from reality, to appeal to the audience. There is also a lot of gore included in the show, but I feel it was overexaggerated to appeal to another type of audience.

The story relied on dragging out the gore and “creepy stuff" to get more views.I think that Ryan Murphy thinks he is pushing the envelope and “breaking norms,” when everything in the show was all the norms exaggerated to make it seem different. It seems he is trying to compare himself with Hitchcock and makes multiple points of doing so. Now, personally, I watch a lot of true crime and horror movies, so a lot of these things are easy to get by. But things were still pushed a bit too far. And back to his voice, a lto fo people say it was super annoying, and they couldn’t stand listening to it. Some even say he probably didn’t even sound like that, they just made him sound like that to make the character seem more creepy.

I wouldn’t really call it a fictional story. It is about Ed Gein, the real person, but you have to remember that these people weren’t around to really know exactly what he was doing. It is more so about the myth surrounding Ed Gein, and they overlap it in interesting ways. With the combination of exaggeration and creepiness, and gore, that is what really makes the show seem more on the fictional side. While this show is odd and morbid, it was a good and interesting watch. If you can handle a show like this, then give it a watch.