became an overnight phenomenon for Netflix, kickstarting a Ryan Murphy entertainment industrial complex based on famous serial killers that’s grown more and more popular with every new season (even as the show’s reviews have gotten worse and worse). Now, Murphy’s latest entry in the anthology series, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” has focused on arguably the most influential serial killer in history — at least when it comes to his impact on popular culture.
“The Ed Gein Story” tells the tale of Ed Gein (as played by Charlie Hunnam), a horrific murderer who may not be as well-known as Ted Bundy, but whose real-life crimes have inspired virtually every horror movie villain you know. Indeed, Gein helped inspire the primary villains in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” and even Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs.” Murphy, however, elects to bring his story to the screen by trading in all that horror for, well, intense horniness.
But that’s not the only baffling choice the latest “Monster” season makes. In the season finale, “The Godfather,” Murphy delivers a bizarre crossover with a beloved canceled Netflix show: “Mindhunter.” That’s right, the David Fincher series fans have been hoping would return since its second season debuted in 2019 (a whopping six years ago).
Murphy isn’t subtle about this, either. In the first 12 minutes of the episode, “The Ed Gein Story” deliberately changes its look to evoke the visual style of “Mindhunter.” After that, we jump from Ted Bundy (John T. O’Brien) murdering two women to a scene in a prison, as FBI agents John Douglas (Sean Carrigan) and Robert Ressler (Caleb Ruminer) arrive to interview Jerry “Shoe Fetish Slayer” Brudos (Happy Anderson, reprising his role from “Mindhunter”).
