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It isn’t exhausting to see what drew Ryan Murphy to the case on the centre of his new Netflix providing, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. In 1996, the brothers had been convicted of the 1989 murders of their mother and father, José and Kitty; the siblings had gunned down the multimillionaire couple whereas they had been watching tv at their Beverly Hills mansion. The responsible verdict got here after two high-profile trials, the primary of which performed out on reside tv on a comparatively new channel, Courtroom TV. America was hooked on the story, which has all of the requisite components for a Murphy adaptation. A brutal crime? A press whirlwind? Huge shows of wealth? Tick, tick, tick.
The prolific showrunner has lengthy been fascinated by causes célèbres that carry collectively grisly true crimes and sensational media protection, instances that draw into query our collective urge for food for consuming horrors. However simply how efficiently he does that – and whether or not the ensuing collection are interrogative or simply flat-out exploitative – might be fairly hit or miss.
Simply take into consideration the hole between his 2016 miniseries The Folks vs OJ Simpson, a well-made and thought-provoking drama overflowing with nice performances, and a more moderen effort, 2022’s The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the primary instalment in the Monster anthology collection that Murphy co-created with Ian Brennan. It was a present that appeared to encapsulate every part that’s fallacious in regards to the present cultural fixation on serial killer tales, lingering obsessively over Dahmer’s grisly crimes. The households of his victims spoke out towards the way in which it portrayed their family members. So the place does this newest drama sit on the Murphy-verse spectrum that runs from considerate to tasteless? Someplace within the center.
Once we are first launched to Lyle and Erik Menéndez, performed by Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch, they appear like obnoxious wealthy boys, driving via Los Angeles at the back of a blacked-out stretch limo, berating their chauffeur for failing to tune in to the right radio station. However cracks quickly seem. Earlier than lengthy, Erik, portrayed by Koch because the quieter, extra fragile foil to Lyle’s pushy bravado, is breaking down in his psychiatrist’s workplace, making a confession that can push the idea of doctor-client privilege to the restrict.
Within the real-life trial, prosecutors claimed that the brothers had been motivated by cash; their defence workforce, nevertheless, mentioned that Lyle and Erik had been victims of sexual, bodily and emotional abuse. Monsters leans into the gray areas of the case, suggesting that their reasoning might have been a messy mixture of the 2.
The present doesn’t draw back from the siblings’ acquisitiveness within the wake of the killing, dramatising their lavish purchasing sprees the place they’d purchase up Rolexes, designer garments and quick automobiles (as you’d anticipate from a Murphy manufacturing, all of the consumerist trappings of the late Eighties are immaculately recreated in each purchasing montage). But when the brothers are monsters, Murphy and co appear to suggest, then their mother and father might deserve that title too. The elder Menéndezes are performed in flashback by Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny; within the early episodes, Bardem as José appears to vibrate with barely suppressed rage, vulnerable to humiliating his sons each publicly and privately.
Earlier than the homicide, the ambiance within the household’s residence is nearly unbearably febrile. However moments of excessive drama typically come throughout as inadvertently camp: one scene within the first episode, during which Sevigny brutally whips a toupee from her son’s head, leaving him bald and morose, feels destined to develop into a meme. Sequences like this, interspersed with exposition-laden dialogue in regards to the police investigation, imply the tone oscillates from foolish to critical.
Fortunately, this newest within the Monster collection lacks the ugly excesses of Dahmer. However it additionally seems like a muddled mixture of the perfect and worst of Murphy’s oeuvre. It’s more likely to please his legions of followers, however might depart his detractors feeling a bit of queasy.
