5 min read- Monster: The Ed Gein Story follows Ed Gein’s descent, from a repressive childhood in 1950s Wisconsin to grave robbing, murder, and a “house of horrors” that inspired Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
- The series mixes true crimes with dramatized storylines—Ilse Koch, Hitchcock, and a fabricated romance—culminating in Gein’s arrest and the grisly discoveries in his farmhouse.
- Declared schizophrenic after his arrest, Gein spends his life in an asylum, imagining new delusions as his crimes cement his role as the blueprint for modern horror.
The Life of a Showgirl just dropped, but true crime fans are spending the weekend with Ryan Murphy’s creepiest Monster muse, Ed Gein. Monster: The Ed Gein Story dropped on Netflix on October 3rd, reviving the corpse of the original American serial killer. Portrayed here by Sons of Anarchy alum Charlie Hunnam, Ed Gein’s sick work became the inspiration for many of the most terrifying characters in horror fiction. More than 70 years after his time, he got the Netflix treatment.
Ed Gein grew up isolated on a rural farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin, with a strict, ultra-religious mother, Augusta, who preached that women were sinful and corrupt. His father was largely absent and his older brother died under “suspicious circumstances”; though, Monster’s retelling shows Ed killing his brother with a strike to the head. Gein was never charged IRL. From there, he gets the taste for the twisted and starts digging up graves to feed his growing curiosity.
Monster flits between a few main universes: Ed Gein’s life on the farm and descent into madness, WWII-era Germany through the eyes of Ilse Koch, and the development of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, among other horror films inspired by Gein. In this way, we’re toggling between Ed Gein’s life and legacy through eight episodes.
In the first episode, we get a sense of Ed’s twisted relationship with sexuality, women, and his mother. He takes inspiration from tales of Ilse Koch, an infamous war criminal of the Holocaust who turned the skins of Jewish prisoners into lampshades, book covers, and other items. We also get a look at Ed’s psychotic ability to self-soothe, imagining his brother alive and well after killing him with a wooden plank. After his mother dies in the first episode, he keeps her decaying body in the house and imagines them cohabitating as normal, living off of canned beans and delusion.
From here, he continues digging up graves and stacking victims—including Evelyn Hartley, a teenager who famously disappeared in the ’50s, played here by pop princess Addison Rae. Meanwhile, he develops a romantic relationship with a young woman named Adeline Watkins, played by Suzanna Son. The IRL version of this story is that Adeline went public with a decades-long love story between her and Gein in the days following his arrest. The story was largely debunked by skeptics, and it’s probably just here for an additional plot layer.
Now that we’ve set the scene, let’s skip to the end.
Following Ed’s final murder of Bernice Worden, a local hardware store owner, the cops find his house of horrors—skin masks, boiling human heart, and all. Bernice’s body is found beheaded and hung upside down in Gein’s barn, to be found by her son Frank, one of the investigators on the case.
Adeline goes to the press with the story of their relationship, adding fuel to an already blazing media fire (whatever those looked like in the ‘50s). Based on the amount of skin, bones, et al. found in Gein’s home, investigators suspect he killed up to 200 people. In truth, he confessed to the killing of two people, the rest came from graves he robbed.
A deeply sick Ed cooperates with police following his arrest, is deemed unfit for trial, and is remanded to a psychiatric facility where he is diagnosed as schizophrenic. The farmhouse becomes a sick tourist attraction, a la Black Mirror, and all of Gein’s belongings are auctioned off at a ridiculous fee.
While in the asylum, Ed stays busy tufting rugs and playing with a ham radio. Regulated and monitored, ham radio wasn’t considered dangerous, but more of a technical hobby that let him feel connected beyond the institution’s walls. Through his radio play and sessions with his psychiatrist, Gein therapizes himself with conversations with imprisoned Ilse Koch, who hangs herself in 1967, and Christine Jorgensen, a transgender woman played by Alanna Darby.
Gruesome on-screen violence continues as Ed imagines murdering a nurse Texas Chainsaw Massacre style, but if we’re honest the story ends like this: Ed Gein spends the rest of his life in a psychiatric facility until he dies of respiratory failure at the age of 77. What happens in Monster between Ed’s arrest and the final credits is a bit sensationalized, which taps the overall thesis of this third season—the lore and legacy of history’s most monstrous figures.
The final episode begins with a Ted Bundy intro, lending to Ed Gein’s moniker and the episode’s title “The Godfather [of all serial killers].” The episode is a winding ruse—a delusion from Ed, who, instead of imagining skin lamps, pictures himself helping the FBI in their hunt for Ted Bundy, a fantasy the hospital staff quietly indulges.
In his final death-bed delusions: Ed Kemper, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and more serial killers inspired by Ed Gein’s legacy usher him down a hallway singing his praises. Ed is visited by Adeline, who promises to carry on his legacy by murdering others. Ed asks her not to, in a psychic moment of growth. His mother greets him with pride, telling him “you changed the whole world.” No lies detected.
In the very final scene of Monster: The Ed Gein Story, rowdy teenagers steal Gein’s headstone from the cemetery, before being scared away by the ghosts of Ed Gein’s legacy— Norman Bates, Buffalo Bill, and Leatherface. Half true, half dramatized, Gein’s headstone is repeatedly stolen from the ground IRL, but Hitchcock-era antagonists are patrolling the grounds.
That’s our show folks.
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