{"id":86638,"date":"2026-09-21T09:35:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T01:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=86638"},"modified":"2026-09-21T09:35:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T01:35:59","slug":"monster-the-lizzie-borden-story-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=86638","title":{"rendered":"Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story Review"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is now streaming on Netflix. This review contains spoilers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes I wonder did she really do these things? Or is it just a story with embellishments? Could people really be that cruel back then?\u201d Lizzie Borden (Ella Beatty) asks this of her housemaid\/lover Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan (Vicky Krieps<\/u>) as they read about Countess Elizabeth B\u00e1thory. It\u2019s just one of the many on-the-nose moments in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the fourth installment in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan\u2019s true crime Netflix franchise. <\/p>\n

This season explores the 1892 murders of wealthy Andrew Borden (Charlie Hunnam) and his wife Abby (Rebecca Hall) in Fall River, Massachusetts. Andrew\u2019s youngest daughter Lizzie is tried for their murders but acquitted by an all-male jury thanks largely to shoddy police work and the belief that a woman was incapable of committing such a heinous, violent crime. Those are the basic facts of the Borden case. <\/p>\n

Showrunner Ian Brennan, who wrote all eight episodes, invents pretty much everything else in this clumsy exploration of, in his words, \u201ca legacy of female rage<\/u>.\u201d That\u2019s why two other real-life infamous women \u2013 the aforementioned Blood Countess (also played by Krieps) and serial killer Aileen Wuornos (Sarah Paulson) \u2013 are shoehorned into what is a show about Lizzie Borden. Brennan wants the viewer to know that women have always had it bad, as if that\u2019s a shocking new revelation. Monster\u2019s not as philosophical or smart as it thinks it is, sending its message loudly but often with the depth of a virtue-signaling social media post. <\/p>\n

The truth about the Lizzie Borden case is that we simply don\u2019t know the truth of what happened or why. Lizzie\u2019s story changed multiple times. Monster, though, never doubts her guilt. The show opens with her killing her father and stepmother. It\u2019s a whydunit not a whodunit. While subtlety is not really to be expected from any production that bears Ryan Murphy\u2019s name, at least consistency would be appreciated. <\/p>\n

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Ella Beatty as Lizzie Borden in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story begins as camp, its first episodes directed by Max Winkler with such rapid-fire theatricality that Baz Luhrmann would need a breather. (Winkler also works in some Wes Anderson-esque compositions at times.) That tone doesn\u2019t match with the two episodes directed by Sarah Adina Smith, whose episodes are among the stronger ones this season. I wonder if binge-watchers will stick with The Lizzie Borden Story through those zanier early episodes in order to get to Smith\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The over-the-top performances by Rebecca Hall and Charlie Hunnam initially portray the murder victims as undeserving of any sympathy at all. The show wants the viewer to see them get what\u2019s coming to them. Later, Abby and Andrew each get their own episode that humanizes them enough that you understand why they became the people they did, so that when their murders are revisited the viewer is being asked (a bit too late) to have mixed feelings about what Lizzie, with Maggie\u2019s assistance, does to them.<\/p>\n

As a stepmother more wicked than any Disney animated movie could conjure, Hall milks every contemptuous line in Abby\u2019s many cruel putdowns, wielding words as sharp as the axes Andrew keeps. Hunnam\u2019s boorish, stammering Andrew oozes with disdain for women, drowning his sorrows with booze and affairs until he becomes a Jack Torrance-like maniac in his final moments (before literally seeing the light).<\/p>\n

“Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story strains to jam a modern overlay onto its period story.\u00a0\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

Both Beatty and Krieps do what they can with the material they\u2019ve been given, but they can\u2019t elevate it. Beatty\u2019s blank-eyed, timid Lizzie evolves into a more cunning and confident young woman through her romantic relationship with Maggie. Alas, there\u2019s no evidence either way if Lizzie and Maggie were lovers<\/u>. The show omits Maggie\u2019s testimony at Lizzie\u2019s trial, and also largely erases Maggie\u2019s Irishness to accommodate the Luxembourg-born Krieps, with her aged-up character garbed like a Victorian Annie Hall. <\/p>\n

In a household where a maid gets her face scalded over making the wrong soup, we\u2019re supposed to believe Maggie could come to work at the home of the richest man in town with purple hair and keep her job? You couldn\u2019t even go to work at an office like that in the 1980s let alone in the 1890s. I bring this up as an illustration of how much : The Lizzie Borden Story strains to jam a modern overlay onto its period story. <\/p>\n

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Sarah Paulson as Aileen Wuornos.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The contemporary portions of this season, where it follows Aileen Wuornos, is where Monster has a better grasp on what it\u2019s trying to say about feminine rage. You can\u2019t take your eyes off Paulson\u2019s Wuornos, although there are a few comedic moments in the \u201cBed & Breakfast\u201d episode where she comes perilously close to channeling Kate McKinnon\u2019s \u201cColleen Rafferty\u201d character from SNL<\/u>. <\/p>\n

While Wuornos\u2019 fascination with Lizzie and her trip to the Borden home is entirely fictional, the final episode made me wish this season had just been about Aileen Wuornos with Lizzie Borden as the side story. Or, Wuornos\u2019 story could have been its own standalone season of Monster, in which case The Lizzie Borden Story might have benefited from having a shorter, more focused story that allowed itself to pick a tone and stick to it.<\/p>\n

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