Netflix’s Monster series began with ambition. The Jeffrey Dahmer season wasn’t an easy watch, but it asked important questions: How did police and parents miss so many warning signs? Why were victims and witnesses ignored? It was disturbing, yes, but it had purpose. The Menendez brothers’ season also went beyond the headline-grabbing trials to explore family dysfunction, abuse, and the complexities of justice. Both installments had something to say.
The third installment of Ryan Murphy’s series is a departure. It lacks depth, has no moral thread, and no larger theme. It plays like a gore reel: a grotesque display of one man’s sickness, stretched over multiple hours and wrapped in Netflix’s prestige branding.
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There’s a reason why, for years, imprudent biopics about Gein, Dahmer, and even Ted Bundy were largely ignored by serious studios and critics. They weren’t art; they were exploitation. They glorified killers on the cheap. Netflix hasn’t reimagined that formula; it has simply repackaged it with a bigger budget and a larger platform.
Yes, Ed Gein may have inspired Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But those films, for all their shocks, carried larger messages, some more profoundly than others, beyond the mere display of violence. Psycho tapped into repressed fears. Silence examined the psychology of both predators and law enforcement. Texas Chainsaw reflected anxieties about isolation and social breakdown. They achieved horror, but they also illuminated.
By contrast, Monster: The Ed Gein Story exceeds all three in gore and yet has nothing really to say. It confuses blood with meaning and shock with storytelling. It’s a free country, though, and Netflix’s defense and protection of its content creators and vehicles are admirable. But the show poses the age-old cultural question: Is this where we really want to go?
Defenders might argue that perhaps this is the point, that the show offers no redeeming value because Gein’s story itself has none, and that the emptiness is intentional. But that’s a cop-out. If the only insight a series offers is that people will watch depravity no matter what, then the series itself becomes part of the problem. It doesn’t critique the appetite for gore; it feeds it.
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Art can be grotesque. It can shock. It can provoke. But it should have purpose. Ed Gein doesn’t. And that matters because true crime done well can still have value. It can expose and question systemic failures, amplify the voices of victims, or force us to confront uncomfortable truths. But let’s not confuse what this iteration of Monster is. The Dahmer and Menendez seasons held up a mirror to society. Ed Gein smashes it. What remains isn’t insight. It’s noise.
In a culture saturated with content, it’s tempting to equate provocation with meaning. Not every dark corner of humanity, however, deserves top billing on our streaming services. Tell the story if it teaches, exposes, or heals — not because it may trend.
Bob Barrows formerly served as a deputy commissioner of the New York City Police Department. He is a practicing attorney who teaches on crime, law, and public policy at several undergraduate institutions.