Monster: The Ed Gein Story has debuted to a poor Rotten Tomatoes score. Season 3 of the Netflix true-crime series created by Ryan Murphy focuses on the infamous serial killer from Wisconsin, and while it features a powerhouse performance by Charlie Hunnam in the title role, it wasn’t enough to captivate critics.
At the time of this writing, Monster: The Ed Gein Story sits at a 50% critics’ score on the Tomatometer. This isn’t very different from the audience score, which is at 66%. These ratings will fluctuate as more critics and viewers catch up on the eight-episode miniseries.
Reviewing for Variety, Aramide Tinubu writes: “Most critically, The Ed Gein Story falls apart because it lacks a central focus. At the core of the narrative is the abusive and hyper-religious relationship between Ed and Augusta. However, Augusta is only vaguely present in the show after the first episode, a criminal underuse of Metcalf’s talent. Instead of the mother-son dynamic, the show highlights Ed’s image in popular culture, as depicted in Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs. As a result, Monster makes Ed Gein mythical again, and in turn strips away the texture and grit that was desperately needed to make the series work.”
For The Guardian, Lucy Gandan says: “The Ed Gein Story feels like it is interested only in bringing an underexploited piece of true crime estate to market, and in demanding sympathy for the man behind the skin masks and boxes of carved-out trophies. It is not an exercise in understanding how he might have been created – beyond the glib and asinine ‘religious ma, whatcha expect?’ offering – and therefore how new Geins might be prevented. It is nothing but a voyeuristic pandering to the basest instincts of viewers.”
Monster: The Ed Gein Story stars Hunnam alongside Laurie Metcalf, who plays Gein’s mother, Augusta. Others include Olivia Williams, Joey Pollari, Suzanna Son, Addison Rae, Tom Hollander, and Tyler Jacob Moore. All episodes were written by Ian Brennan, who was also a director of two episodes. The remaining episodes were directed by Max Winkler, known for his work in Ryan Murphy’s catalog of series.
Charlie Hunnam’s Transformation Into Ed Gein Is Superb
One thing that most critics seem to agree on is Charlie Hunnam’s impressive performance as the serial killer. It was a role that couldn’t have been easy to execute, considering the events in the series took place in the 1950s, and Gein’s mannerisms aren’t documented on existing footage. When talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Hunnam confirmed he had to rely on several resources to achieve a truthful version of Gein: “I read every single book that had been written about him, and there was a lot of books. I read all of the court transcriptions, all of his medical records. And then I read the scripts over and over to understand what would drive a human being to do some of the pretty wild things he did — pretty despicable acts. We were really very serious about trying to understand the man and not just sensationalize this, and certainly not glamorize it at all.”
When talking to People magazine, Hunnam said that Gein was “a very skinny, malnourished type of guy.” For the physical transformation, he underwent a regime to lose as much weight as possible: “The basic first step was losing 30 pounds so I could look like him. He’d been abused, he was left in isolation, so he had no real social context to reflect back to him, normal behavior.”