Plot: Trapped in a cruel Victorian-era household, Lizzie Borden kills her parents in a gory ax murder that shocks the nation.
Review: Ryan Murphy productions tend to follow a pretty familiar trajectory: the first season or two connect with audiences who appreciate the transgressive and shocking nature of the subject matter, which prompts Murphy and his writing team to take it up a notch. After that, the subsequent seasons begin to show signs of diminishing returns as the desire to drop jaws and deliver buzz just ends up being gross and, worst of all, boring. The latest season of the true-crime anthology Monster chronicles the American killer Lizzie Borden, but focuses more on the crime and sensationalist media frenzy than on the truth of what actually happened. The result is a series chock full of Ryan Murphy trademarks but without the same spark that made the earlier seasons work.
To be blunt, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is all over the place. The series opens with a sequence depicting the brutal axe murders of Andrew Borden (Charlie Hunnam) and his wife, Abby (Rebecca Hall), at the hands of Lizzie (Ella Beatty). The famous nursery rhyme about Lizzie giving her parents “forty whacks” is shown on screen, along with the blood splatter all over the face of the young murderess. The episode then shifts to earlier as we see Abby is more of an evil stepmother out of a fairy tale, who treats Lizzie like a mentally deficient burden. Trying to marry her off proves fruitless as suitors see Lizzie as horse-faced and strange, not to mention her unusually heavy menstrual cycle. Andrew is a workaholic who deals with not having a son to pass his legacy down to, and lets Abby berate and emotionally abuse Lizzie, as well as countless housemaids. When Bridget Sullivan (Vicky Krieps) arrives and is hired, she awakens romantic thoughts in Lizzie and plants the seeds for what will become her infamous crime.
So much of what happens in this series has little to no basis in reality that it boggles the mind as to how this series could be considered “true crime”. Lizzie is portrayed as in her early twenties rather than the thirty-two-year-old historical figure. The housemaid Bridget is based on was in her mid-twenties in reality but is much older here. The rest of what takes place through the series maintains the high points of the timeline from Lizzie’s crime through her acquittal in what was then deemed the crime of the century and a landmark legal moment in American history.
The series looks at what happened to Lizzie and Bridget after the trial, chronicling their involvement in the suffrage movement and more, but so much of the backstory and insight into the crimes is turned into something closer to American Horror Story than an actual historical investigation. The Lizzie Borden Story is more focused on digging into Lizzie’s sexuality and romantic relationship with Bridget than it is with the other suspects and theories of the crime. It also changes the relationship between Lizzie and her sister, Emma (Billie Lourd), into something more adversarial.
In the title role, Ella Beatty is good as Lizzie Borden, giving the young woman an impressionable air that hides her deeper, calculating interior. The relationship between Lizzie and Bridget is a key element to the series, with Vicky Krieps doing a good job as the mentor, teacher, and instigator of Lizzie’s crimes. Charlie Hunnam, returning to Ryan Murphy’s world after his leading role in Monster: The Ed Gein Story, is understated as Lizzie’s father, with the heavy lifting falling to Rebecca Hall. Hall previously starred in Murphy’s The Beauty, and here she is sensational as the epitome of the evil stepmother. Chewing every scene she is in, Hall is a phenomenal villain, and I enjoyed every moment she was on screen.
The only other actor in this cast who is as good is Sarah Paulson as Aileen Wuornos. The inclusion of Wuornos in this series fits as you compare her to Lizzie as two women who committed heinous crimes with some parallels, but mashing them together feels heavy-handed and doesn’t quite work narratively. Still, Paulson deserves an award for her transformative performance, which is as good as Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning portrayal in the 2003 film Monster, despite both actors approaching the role very differently.
Ryan Murphy’s long-time collaborator Ian Brennan is credited on all eight episodes of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, with directing duties handled by Max Winkler on six episodes and Sarah Adina Smith on two. The period costumes and production values for the turn-of-the-century scenes, as well as those in the 1990s, and back to Elizabeth Bathory in the sixteenth century, are impressively executed, as are the bloody effects prevalent throughout the series. There is a far more sensationalized feel to this season compared to the bleak first and second seasons, focused on Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez Brothers.
All four seasons of Monster have attempted to humanize the murderous subjects, but this season feels even more focused on portraying Lizzie as an impressionable young woman who followed someone else’s lead. Ian Brennan falls into the same critique often given to Ryan Murphy that they fail to write realistic or believable queer female characters, something especially noticeable when there is an extensive historical record of the actual Lizzie Borden.
The Monster franchise has tread new ground this season by giving us the first female-led entry in the anthology, but it does a disservice to the historical record by turning it into a grand guignol bloodbath full of tangential plot elements that unnecessarily pad out the eight-episode season. Ella Beatty is serviceable in the lead opposite Vicky Krieps, but most of the series feels languid and boring, with the occasional pop of the ax for a gory wake-up call.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is overall the weakest entry in the anthology to date, which is a shame, as both Rebecca Hall and Sarah Paulson give two of the best performances of the year. I would expect that this season will be a massive success with audiences flocking to the latest true crime series, but this season deviates so far from the truth of the story that it fails to really capture what the purpose of this anthology was meant to be.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is now streaming on Netflix.