Monster: The Ed Gein Story was created by Ryan Murphy and continues his Netflix anthology exploring infamous American crimes, drawing inspiration from real-life events and their cultural echoes. The series is significant for its chilling portrayal of Ed Gein’s psychological descent and its influence on horror cinema.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is the third installment in Ryan Murphy’s provocative Netflix anthology, following Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Monster: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story.
Written and co-directed by Murphy, the series continues his shift from stylised horror fiction to dramatised true crime, blending psychological depth with cultural critique.
Who’s the real monster in Monster:The Ed Gein Story? There are quite a few options — with both the viewers, and society at large, included. “The interesting thing about the show is the thesis statement of every season is: Are monsters born or are they made?” co-creator Ryan Murphy asks. “And I think in Ed’s case, it’s probably a little of both.”
Murphy, known for American Horror Story, brings his signature aesthetic to the real-life horrors of Ed Gein, a man whose crimes—grave robbing, murder, and body mutilation—shocked mid-century America and inspired some of the most iconic horror films in cinematic history. The series stars Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein, delivering a haunting performance that captures both the eerie stillness and fractured psyche of a man shaped by isolation, trauma, and mental illness. Laurie Metcalf plays Augusta Gein, Ed’s domineering mother, whose religious fanaticism and emotional abuse form the crucible of his psychological unravelling.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story was created and written by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, with Max Winkler serving as one of the key directors.
This third installment in Netflix’s Monster anthology continues Murphy and Brennan’s exploration of infamous American criminals through a stylized, psychological lens.
Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, longtime collaborators known for Glee, American Horror Story, and The Politician, co-created the Monster series to reframe notorious cases from the perspective of victims and society. Their writing in The Ed Gein Story blends historical fact with dramatised introspection, focusing on Gein’s psychological descent and the cultural ripple effects of his crimes. Murphy and Brennan were reportedly inspired by how Gein’s story influenced horror cinema, particularly films like Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.
Director Max Winkler, known for his emotionally nuanced storytelling, helmed key episodes and shaped the series’ haunting tone. In interviews, Winkler emphasized the importance of portraying Gein’s inner world—his trauma, isolation, and distorted relationship with his mother Augusta. Winkler also crafted the series’ final scene, which ends with the chilling line “Only a mother could love you,” a moment he described as the emotional “Rosebud” of the narrative.
Together, Murphy, Brennan, and Winkler created a series that not only revisits Gein’s crimes but also interrogates the societal and psychological conditions that birthed them. Their collaborative vision turns Monster: The Ed Gein Story into a meditation on monstrosity, memory, and the blurred line between horror and history.
What inspired the series
The inspiration behind the series lies in the disturbing legacy of Ed Gein, whose crimes in 1950s Wisconsin became the blueprint for fictional killers like Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.
Murphy’s series doesn’t merely recount Gein’s crimes—it interrogates the roots of monstrosity, asking whether evil is born or made.
The show explores Gein’s childhood under Augusta’s oppressive rule, where he was taught that women were sinful and that intimacy was dangerous. This upbringing, steeped in religious extremism and emotional deprivation, laid the groundwork for Gein’s later obsession with the female form and his grotesque attempts to resurrect his mother through acts of body desecration.
The series dramatises key moments in Gein’s life: the suspicious death of his brother Henry, Augusta’s stroke and eventual death, and Gein’s descent into grave robbing and murder. These events are portrayed not just as plot points but as psychological ruptures, each deepening Gein’s dissociation and feeding his delusions.
What sets “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” apart is its refusal to sensationalise violence
Instead, it offers a slow, unnerving study of loneliness, mental illness, and the porous boundary between grief and madness. The series suggests that Gein’s crimes were less about sadism and more about a desperate, deluded attempt to preserve connection—to his mother, to identity, to meaning. This framing invites viewers to consider the societal failures that allowed Gein’s deterioration to go unnoticed: the inept police investigation into his brother’s death, the lack of mental health support, and the cultural silence around abuse and isolation. By humanizing Gein in his later institutionalized years—medicated, soft-spoken, and seemingly harmless—the series complicates the viewer’s understanding of monstrosity. It asks whether Gein was ever truly evil, or simply broken beyond repair.
The significance of the series also lies in its cultural resonance
By revisiting Gein’s story, Murphy not only reanimates a historical figure but also reflects on the enduring fascination with true crime and the horror genre’s roots in real trauma.
The show becomes a meta-commentary on how society processes fear and deviance through fiction. It reminds us that behind every horror icon is a real person, often shaped by suffering, and that our entertainment is often built on the bones of the forgotten and the vilified.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story thus serves as both a chilling narrative and a cultural mirror, reflecting our collective obsession with darkness and the stories we tell to make sense of it.
