'Netflix's latest Monster series is the most depraved thing I've seen. That's not the worst part.'

Netflix has unleashed its latest grisly figure in its popular Monster anthology. The series is — by far — the most disturbing yet, but it's also the worst of the trilogy.

The Monster series, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, dramatises the lives of notorious killers. Season 1 focused on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters) and Season 2 covered Lyle and Erik Menendez (Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch), two brothers who murdered their parents.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story explores the life and crimes of the Butcher of Plainfield, a soft-spoken oddball who, in 1950s Wisconsin, was found to have committed the most depraved and macabre acts imaginable, which inspired cinema's most disturbing horror villains.

Sons of Anarchy hunk Charlie Hunnam plays Ed Gein, a man dominated by his fanatically religious mother, Augusta, played by Lady Bird's Laurie Metcalf. The cast also features fictionalised versions of his girlfriend Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son), babysitter Evelyn Hartley (Addison Rae), famed director Alfred Hitchcock (Tom Hollander) and Vicky Krieps as real-life Nazi war criminal, Ilse Koch.

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Firstly, it must be said that Hunnam's performance is astounding — this role clearly took over his life, as the actor has admitted he listened to hours of recordings to nail Gein's softly spoken voice. And yep, it works.

Son, as Gein's disturbed girlfriend (albeit one who seems largely fabricated), was also a standout in the series.

But despite only appearing in a handful of scenes, it's Metcalf as Gein's domineering mother, Augusta, who truly steals the show. The actress elevates every scene she's in, and thoughtfully captures the oppressive mother-son dynamic that laid the foundations for Gein's twisted mind.

Like most of Murphy's offerings, the series is visually stunning: its impressive production value, detailed art direction and special effects create an unsettling atmosphere.

The show stitches together the past, present and future in an effective way — jumping between Wisconsin to Nazi Germany, where Gein first developed his macabre fascination with dead bodies from seeing photos of the horrors of the Holocaust, along with flashing forward to Gein's influence on the horror movie genre with the makings of Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs.

This storytelling convention might come across as a little scattered, but tbh, I found it was necessary to have some reprieve from being stuck inside Gein's house of horrors, which was often too grim to endure for too long.

The show's poster set the scene for the horrors to come. Image: Netflix.

That said, overall, there are far too many subplots and added characters in the eight episodes. This created an unfocused narrative, leaving the viewers often confused by some unnecessary scenes that prevent the series from feeling fully cohesive.

The series starts strong but loses its way around the halfway mark. It ends with the son of one of the victims taking up so much time and space — a character who is a stranger to the viewer up to that point — which felt like a bizarre creative choice.

Then there are the moments that feel badly written. For instance, Adeline came across as muddled and underwritten: in the worst example, she went from screaming one scene upon finding the rotting corpse of Augusta in Gein's house to telling him that she wasn't scared of dead bodies and encouraged his 'hobby'. Huh? Then why the dramatics?

But this brings us back to the root of the show's problem: it's hard to know whether what was unfolding was actually happening, or was just one of Gein's delusions. This means that often the viewer becomes invested in a conversation or moment, only for the rug to be pulled out from under you once you realise this only existed in the mind of Gein and didn't further the plot in any way.

The babysitter episode was especially hard to follow (and in real-life, it never happened). Image: Netflix.

By the third fake conversation that began towards the series' end, I seriously started to lose interest. Despite Gein starting medication for his schizophrenia, he still seemingly imagined helping the FBI identify Ted Bundy. Or did he do that? There was no real effort by the writers to clarify what was real and what wasn't.

Giving so much space to explore Gein's delusions came across as self-indulgent at best and at worst, the series attempted to make Gein the hero of his story — at least, in his own mind.

The results left a oddly ambigous legacy for a man who was responsible for the murder and mutilation of multiple women — women with hopes and dreams far removed from being known as a piece of one of Gein's skin suits.

The show's attempts to address Gein's schizophrenia diagnosis could have been summed up quickly, but instead, the writers stretched out this story arc to attempt to seemingly exonerate the Butcher of Plainfield.

Are we supposed to forgive Ed Gein's crimes because he was just a misunderstood man in the grips of mental illness? By the series end, it feels a lot like it.

This concept would be slightly more palatable if the show hadn't spent so much time showing the extent of Gein's atrocities in excruciating, grotesque detail. One shot involving women's vulvas appeared multiple times and served little purpose other than to exploit these victims and fetishise their bodies.

The Ed Gein Story made the Menendez brothers series look comparatively tame. Image: Netflix.

I say this as someone who has a strong stomach and frequently watches horror movies but Monster: The Ed Gein Story felt like it crossed the line on multiple occasions. It's one of the most depraved things I've seen.

If anything, the story would have fit better in Murphy's other anthology series American Horror Story, which is a series that often takes inspiration from real-life events, but fabricates the rest. In the case of Monster, this 'true crime' case quickly spiralled into a world of fantasy with multiple storylines — the murder of Gein's brother, the babysitter arc and his romance with Adeline — having very little connection to the true events.

Season 3 is so sensationalised and fabricated to the point that the term 'true crime' doesn't often apply, which sets a moral grey area for whether the series should have been made.

The problem with the Monster anthology is that it doesn't seem to know what it is. The first season stayed relatively close to the subject matter of Jeffrey Dahmer's upbringing and crimes. But then the Menendez brothers series, with its courtroom scenes, social commentary and redeeming villains, could have easily been an American Crime Story season.

What the first two seasons of Monster did well was strip away the man, or men, behind the monstrous myth they inspired. The Ed Gein Story goes one step further — suggesting the monster is the viewer for feeding these myths while removing a lot of the agency from Gein, a man who reminder: did admit to brutally killing two women.

Whether it's Hitchcock saying that if Gein didn't see photos of the Holocaust, he wouldn't have committed his atrocities, or Gein himself blaming his mother for his crimes, there's not a lot of accountability in this monster tale.

Meanwhile, the stories of the victims and the countless people whose bodies were defiled by Gein are lost along the way. If the series is supposed to be a criticism of our cultural obsession with salacious true crime stories and the glorification of murderers, I'm afraid the call is still coming from inside the house.

Feature image: Netflix.