Inside the Mind of a Monster: Watching Ed Gein Was a Study I Didn’t Expect to Survive

Series Review

Jasmine Singh

After Dahmer and The Menendez Brothers, I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to watch another monster unfold on screen. Netflix had been pushing Monster: The Ed Gein Story into my recommendations every time I logged in—like it knew I was circling the edge of clicking. And as a student of social anthropology, especially interested in the grey zone where psychology meets society, I wondered: What could I possibly learn from watching another broken man commit unthinkable acts?

Eventually, curiosity won. Or maybe it was academic guilt. Either way, I pressed play—and fell into the frozen hellscape of 1950s Wisconsin.

Charlie Hunnam's portrayal of Ed Gein is something I can’t unsee. His voice, his movements, even the eerie stillness of his stares—they make your skin crawl. He’s both grotesque and heartbreakingly human, which is exactly what makes it so disturbing. Watching him desecrate graves, mutilate bodies, and retreat into delusions tied to his dead mother wasn’t just horror—it was psychological dissection.

At first, I tried to frame it through the lens of Freud—was this just a textbook Oedipus complex? But the story kept slipping through those clean explanations. It was more tangled. What I saw was loneliness, repression, religious shame, and a desperate hunger for love and identity. He wasn't just trying to become his mother—he was trying to escape the man he didn’t understand himself to be.

This series isn’t about solving crimes or catching killers. You already know the ending. What it does is pull you uncomfortably close—too close—to the why. And that’s what makes it brilliant, and terrifying. At times, I found myself understanding the monster far more than I wanted to. That’s a heavy, almost nauseating realization.

The final two episodes drag a bit, almost veering into a redemption arc I didn’t need. The pacing slows, and while the darkness remains, the tension thins. What stuck with me most, though, was the music—those bright, almost cheerful pop songs playing as he commits unspeakable acts. That contrast made the horror worse. Not just visual, but emotional dissonance.

This third installment in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monster anthology doesn’t just revisit history—it resurrects it, repackaged as entertainment with a deeply unsettling edge. And knowing that Ed Gein’s crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs only deepens the impact. You begin to see how real horror births cinematic horror—and how close the two can be.

Did this monster go too far? Maybe. But do monsters ever know when to stop?