Monster the Lizzie Borden Story Review: A Stylish but Frustrating Netflix Misfire

Simply saying a show is bad without offering any critical analysis doesn’t help the show itself or an audience trying to understand where exactly it all went wrong. The problem with diving into a show like Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is that there are promising elements of the series that really could have worked if the show wanted them to.

Created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, the series is the fourth standalone entry in Murphy’s Monster franchise. The controversial anthology started with Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer, tackled the Menendez brothers, and then told the story of Ed Gein’s life in a mixed-genre season, but the show takes its biggest swing yet with Lizzie Borden. That doesn’t necessarily mean it worked.

The show starts with a theatrical vibe for the season that is quickly abandoned. Whatever point about “female rage” the show is trying to make with Lizzie Borden and Sarah Paulson’s Aileen Wuornos doesn’t really work. And most critically, the entire show seems to take a rhyme about Borden and try to make an entire season out of it, leaving the creative team struggling to make it interesting.

The story centers on Lizzie Borden (Ella Beatty), who is stuck in a house with her father, Andrew (Charlie Hunnam), and her stepmother, Abby (Rebecca Hall). As her stepmother continues to badger her and belittle her, Lizzie and the maid, Maggie (Vicky Krieps), come up with a plan to kill them both so that Lizzie and Maggie can run away together.

There is no factual evidence to point to Borden being in a relationship with the maid, but there has been speculation about Borden’s sexuality. (And that’s likely why Brennan and Murphy inserted Wuornos in the story even though there is no proof that Borden was gay or that Wuornos was obsessed with Borden, as the show suggests.)

Instead, what people get when they check into the Borden house is a show of mixed ideas with a fun style concept, a brilliant performance by Beatty, and captivating visuals, but a mess everywhere that counts.

Style Alone Does Not Make a Good Show

Sarah Paulson as Aileen Wuornos in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story

Lizzie Borden has a very clear visual style that Ed Gein teased but neither of the other Monster seasons attempted. That does make the show stand out a bit because it is fun to see how Murphy and Brennan, with the help of director Max Winkler, weave these elements into the show. They do largely abandon the most interesting choice almost instantly, though. The characters are still over the top, but the reason for it barely works because the overall feel of the show shifts so drastically.

Beatty’s strong performance as Lizzie can only carry so much. And with all the nonsense involving Paulson’s take on Wuornos, the show quickly turns into a hodgepodge.

There’s Lizzie planning her parents’ deaths with the maid (unsubstantiated), alongside flashes of Wuornos being so obsessed with Borden that she bases her entire worldview around her, including her justification for murder (also unsubstantiated). If anything, it feels as if Murphy and company wanted Paulson to be in the show and found a way to shoehorn her in.

When the show is fun, it barely lasts. For every clever or fascinating choice, there are four more frustrating ones that follow. It all seems to come back to a rhyme that doesn’t accurately reflect the case.

Much of what we think we know about Lizzie Borden is rooted in myth, and that’s part of the allure of her story. But instead of diving into the mysteries and the theories, Monster chooses the most sensationalized version — and the show suffers for it.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is now streaming on Netflix.