Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story Can’t Decide Between Gothic Black Comedy and Serious Drama

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the fourth installment in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true crime anthology franchise, is now streaming on Netflix, where critics have found it too scattershot to commit to a single tone. The eight-episode season revisits the 1892 murders of Andrew and Abby Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts, and the subsequent acquittal of Andrew’s youngest daughter Lizzie, while also shoehorning in the fictionalized tales of infamous women Countess Elizabeth Báthory and Aileen Wuornos. In doing so, the show aims to deliver “a legacy of female rage,” but reviewers argue it never quite decides whether it wants to be a campy dark comedy or a sobering drama about the plight of abused women.

The historical backbone of the season is well documented: wealthy Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were killed in their Fall River home, and Andrew’s youngest daughter Lizzie was tried for the murders before being acquitted by an all-male jury, aided by shoddy police work and the prevailing belief that a woman was incapable of such violence. It is from this real foundation that showrunner Ian Brennan, who wrote all eight episodes, builds his narrative, inventing much of the surrounding drama to explore themes of gender and power.

A Tone That Won’t Settle

The series opens as pure camp, with the first episodes directed by Max Winkler delivering rapid-fire theatricality and occasional Wes Anderson-esque compositions. That zany energy, however, clashes with the two episodes helmed by Sarah Adina Smith, whose work is considered among the season’s strongest. The tonal whiplash is most evident in how the show treats its central question: is this a whydunit mystery, or a whodunit?

Unlike the historical record, which leaves the truth of the Borden murders deliberately ambiguous, Monster never doubts Lizzie’s guilt. The show opens with her killing her father and stepmother, and its message about women’s suffering is delivered loudly but, critics say, with the depth of a virtue-signaling social media post rather than genuine philosophical insight.

Monster aims to be an insightful commentary on female rage, but it never commits to how it wants to convey that message. Is it a Gothic dark comedy about getting away with murder or a centuries-spanning tragedy about the plight of abused and oppressed women?

Reviewer

Performances That Outrun the Material

The cast does much to carry the uneven script. Rebecca Hall and Charlie Hunnam initially portray the murder victims as undeserving of sympathy, only to humanize them in their own episodes, leaving viewers to grapple with mixed feelings about Lizzie’s crimes too late in the narrative. Hall, in particular, excels as the wicked stepmother Abby, wielding contemptuous dialogue with the same sharpness as the axes that litter Andrew’s home.

Hunnam’s boorish, stammering Andrew oozes disdain for women and descends into a Jack Torrance-like maniac in his final moments. Meanwhile, Ella Beatty and Vicky Krieps do what they can with thinner material. Beatty’s blank-eyed, timid Lizzie evolves into a more cunning and confident young woman through her relationship with Maggie, the housemaid and lover played by Krieps. As Beatty’s Lizzie grows, so does the tension around Maggie’s presence — though, as the show acknowledges, there is no evidence either way if Lizzie and Maggie were lovers.

However, the series’ liberties with history strain credibility. It omits Maggie’s testimony at Lizzie’s trial and largely erases Maggie’s Irishness to accommodate the Luxembourg-born Krieps, casting her aged-up character in a Victorian Annie Hall style. In a household where a maid gets her face scalded over making the wrong soup, viewers are asked to believe she could keep her job at the home of the richest man in town with purple hair — a modern overlay jammed onto a period story.

Looking Ahead

The season’s contemporary portions, which follow Aileen Wuornos, represent Monster’s strongest grasp on its central theme. Sarah Paulson delivers a magnetic performance as the serial killer, though a few comedic beats in the “Bed & Breakfast” episode flirt dangerously with pastiche. The final episode, in which Wuornos visits the Borden home, led some critics to wish the season had focused solely on her story.

Ultimately, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story has the cast and the subject matter to succeed, but its inability to choose a tone leaves it too scattershot to fully land its message. As the true crime franchise moves forward, the question remains whether future seasons can find the consistency this fourth installment so clearly lacked.