‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ — Digging Up America’s Original Monster

(Photo credit to Netflix )

Written by Mandie Stevens, Staff Writer

Netflix is back in the graveyard again.

This time, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan (creators of the ‘Monster’ anthology, also behind ‘Glee’, ‘American Horror Story’, ‘The Politician’, and ‘Scream Queens’) are prying open one of the darkest coffins in American crime with ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story.’ Premiering October 3, 2025, the third season promises eight episodes of farmhouse horror, mother issues turned nuclear, and the man whose crimes inspired half your favorite slashers.

From Charming to chilling, Charlie Hunnam wasn’t the obvious choice to play Ed Gein — and maybe that’s exactly why he was picked. Known for his magnetism as Jax Teller in ‘Sons of Anarchy’, Hunnam brings the intensity and depth Murphy and Brennan needed for this deeply psychological role. Casting him against type was a gamble: could the heartthrob antihero convincingly become a haunted, morally twisted farmer whose depravity creeps under your skin? The answer is yes.

This was a brave choice for Hunnam, who once set the world on fire as the dangerous, magnetic outlaw who made leather look holy. Hunnam trades in his biker leather for blood-stained flannel, shedding every trace of Jax’s swagger. To inhabit Gein, he altered his posture, his gestures, and even his voice, often speaking in an unnaturally high pitch, soft and twitchy, making every line feel tense and unsettling. He doesn’t just act like Gein; he becomes a man warped by isolation, obsession, and trauma, showing us the monster in full, chilling detail.

Hunnam risks the heartthrob image that carried him for years, and instead delivers a performance that’s uncanny in its credibility — a gaunt, haunted shell of a man who feels more myth than flesh. It’s not just casting against type. It’s tearing down a type entirely.

Beside him, Laurie Metcalf embodies Augusta Gein, Ed’s domineering mother, with a terrifying precision that only someone of her caliber could deliver. From her Oscar-nominated work in ‘Lady Bird’ to her Emmy-winning turns on ‘Roseanne’ and her darkly deadpan brilliance in ‘Getting On’, among so many others, Metcalf turns maternal authority into a palpable, suffocating presence, reminding us at every moment how deeply Ed’s upbringing shaped the monster he became.

The cast also tilts meta: Tom Hollander shows up as Alfred Hitchcock, Olivia Williams as Alma Reville — because you can’t tell Gein’s story without acknowledging that he was the blueprint for Norman Bates, Leatherface, and Buffalo Bill. Fiction kept chewing on his bones long after Wisconsin locked him away.

Ed Gein (1906–1984) lived in Plainfield, Wisconsin — an isolated farm town where trauma and loneliness intertwined with his mother’s suffocating authority. He exhumed corpses from local cemeteries, fashioned trophies, masks, and even clothing from human remains, and eventually escalated to murder. His depravity is staggering: a grotesque obsession with death and the human body that blurred the line between necrophilia, craftsmanship, and pure horror.

Murphy and Brennan’s series doesn’t shy away from this darkness. It digs into the psychology of a monster, exploring the horrifying intersections of nature, nurture, and isolation. Who was really at fault? Was it Ed himself, born twisted and alone, or his mother, whose fear and control shaped a nightmare? The series leans into these questions, giving every scene an eerie, almost suffocating tension.

Here’s the thing: Ed Gein wasn’t prolific like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy, but his crimes were so grotesque, so imaginative, that they left an indelible mark on pop culture. Grave robbing, human-skin masks, furniture built from bones — the “house of horrors” journalists described became a blueprint for horror stories for the next 100 years. The series reminds us that Gein’s legacy is not just in bodies or headlines but in how his life and actions reshaped horror itself.

That’s where Murphy and Brennan sink their teeth in. Not just into what Gein did, but into WHY we’re still obsessed. Why we rubberneck at monsters like him, even as we swear we’re disgusted. Why we turn his crimes into horror movies we watch wide-eyed, munching popcorn.

Gein was, in many ways, the prototype. A monster whose reality was far stranger — and far more terrifying — than fiction. His mother’s shadow, his isolation, and his own twisted obsessions created a perfect storm of depravity. Sometimes the scariest monsters are born in plain daylight, in small towns, in the hearts of people no one suspects — yet they leave a legacy that haunts horror forever.

By the time the credits roll, ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ has left its mark. The performances, the atmosphere, the unsettling tension — it all lingers, crawling into the quiet corners of your mind. You can watch the full season now on Netflix, if you dare.

For more horror news from our Horror Queen, Mandie, follow NaN’s Horror Corner.

 

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