A murder franchise finds its Monsters- and they're us

MIDWAY THROUGH MONSTER: THE ED GEIN STORY, the title character stares into the camera and warns: “You shouldn't be watching this.” He’s talking to two strangers who've interrupted him in the bloody aftermath of a murder. But the closeup makes it clear that Gein, played with eerie gentleness by Charlie Hunnam, is also addressing his audience of Netflix viewers. Then he revs his chainsaw and chases the men. Of course, we keep watching. In the next scene, Gein offers the spectacle of a dead, nude woman, strung up like a carcass in a slaughterhouse.

- BY JUDY BERMAN

Ed Gein's (Hunnam) sometime girlfriend Adeline Watkins (Son) isn't so sweet

This sequence could easily get lost amid the parade of violence, gore, warped sexuality, and heavy-handed social commentary that makes up this and every season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's Monster anthology. Yet it encapsulates the creators’ attitude toward true-crime fans. Like the two previous installments, on Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers, Ed Gein retells in lurid—and largely fantastical—detail the legend of a notorious killer, explaining what our obsession with and inevitable misunderstanding of each case says about society. In taking on Gein, America’s ur—serial killer and the inspiration for many disturbing works of art and crime, Monster indicts the audience that made it one of TV’s most popular shows.

Its first two seasons open with multiple episodes reenacting the crimes with self-aware salaciousness. Then there’s a turn, when the human impact of the case comes to the fore, challenging our ostensibly uncritical fascination with murder schlock. Dahmer shifts focus to the queer men and people of color whose oppression enabled Jeff (Evan Peters) to prey on them. Menendez is practically American Psycho for three episodes; preppies Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch) go on a shopping spree after executing their parents (Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny). Then come the boys’ harrowing accounts of sexual abuse at home.