Parents' Guide to Monster: The Ed Gein Story

The third installment of the Monster franchise is unsettling. It mixes flashbacks, flash-forwards, and creative liberties that attempt to humanize Ed Gein while simultaneously calling attention to the grotesqueness of his acts and his lasting influence on popular culture. As it recreates events that shaped the late serial killer's life, it also jumps forward to a future where director Alfred Hitchcock is excited about meticulously adapting Robert Bloch's book for the big screen by recreating the iconic Gein-inspired character of Norman Bates, and making the story more suspenseful by focusing it on the examination of human darkness. Adding to this are moments depicting some of the killer's psychotic episodes, many of which include disturbing Holocaust-inspired scenes of sadism featuring Nazi sadist Ilse Koch, aka the "Witch of Buchenwald" (played by Vicky Krieps).

Throughout it all are brief (and sometimes too obvious) references to other films that Ed Gein inspired, including Silence of the Lambs and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. With so much happening at once, the dramatic biopic often gives way to a muddled sense of storytelling. Meanwhile, the extent to which the series graphically dramatizes the killer's horrific acts is hard hard to get past, making it easy to question the ethics of exploiting them for the purposes of art, entertainment, and profit. Watching Monster: The Ed Gein Story can be an overwhelming experience, and many viewers will find it too difficult or disturbing.