THE STORY – On August 4, 1892, the Borden spouses, Andrew and Abby, are found hacked to death with a hatchet in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Their daughter/stepdaughter, Lizzie, becomes the prime suspect in the murders.
THE CAST – Ella Beatty, Vicky Krieps, Charlie Hunnam, Rebecca Hall & Sarah Paulson
THE TEAM – Ryan Murphy & Ian Brennan (Creators)
Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother 40 whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father 41
Culturally, Lizzie Borden needs no introduction. Immortalized by a haunting nursery rhyme and decades of pop culture, Borden and her infamous crime remain deeply etched in the public consciousness. So one might wonder what new insight Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, the creators behind this season of “Monster,” could possibly bring to the story. The answer, unfortunately, is nothing – unless they’re willing to make it up. “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story” falls victim to Murphy’s penchant for exploitation and sexualization of an infamous story, adding nothing new beyond overly stylized set pieces meant to shock and awe. And it’s shockingly awful.
The beats of the story remain the same: we open with Lizzie Borden (played by a naturally talented Ella Beatty) whacking her father and stepmother with an ax in their home (which, by the way, isn’t even correct – the father, Andrew, was killed on the sofa, not in the entryway while catching his daughter killing his wife). So, after only a few minutes, not off to a great start. We then backtrack a few months to see what led up to these tragic events. Murphy and Brennan take more than a few fictitious liberties with the story, including altering Lizzie’s personality to being a young, naive, isolated woman who’s basically a prisoner in her own home. In reality, Lizzie was 32 at the time of the murders, a Sunday school teacher with plenty of friends, and had traveled Europe. In the show, she befriends Bridget (played by Vicky Krieps), a new housemaid, and their relationship quickly turns romantic before the two engage in a little murder. In reality, there’s no evidence the relationship was ever more than platonic, save for the rumors after the killings.
This version of events places the new housemaid, Bridget, at the center of Lizzie’s story and her parents’ eventual downfall. Bridget entertains her new friend with tales of young women who allegedly murder young girls and bathe in their blood. Creeped out? Not our Lizzie, who apparently finds it inspiring. Bridget also teaches Lizzie about the wonders of an orgasm, making her her own sex toy, and giving her her first kiss. By all accounts, none of this actually happened, but don’t let that stop Ryan Murphy from making a soapy, sexy drama out of it. Vicky Krieps takes real ownership over Bridget, never letting her play the victim but embodying the original cool Brooklyn coffee shop girl a degree too far. This is supposed to be a poor housemaid in Massachusetts in the 1890s, not someone serving you $9 freshly whisked matcha.
As for motive, Murphy and Brennan shape the victims as flat antagonists. Evil stepmother Abby, played by Rebeca Hall (who’s over-the-top in a cartoonish way), has raised Lizzie since she was two and is terrible to her daughter for no apparent reason. A neglectful, cheating father – played by a deliciously yet overly-campy sad sack Charlie Hunnam – is no recourse for Lizzie, more concerned with his business and, inexplicably, axes. The parents are irredeemably one-dimensional, with Brennan and Murphy throwing motive in the audience’s face from the jump. They’re apparently just simply evil with not a nurturing bone in their body. Wouldn’t you be driven to murder as well?
As for Lizzie herself, Hollywood royalty Ella Beatty does a fine job elevating the theater camp dialogue without overdoing it. She balances Lizzie’s self-preservation with inherent guilt in a way that makes you believe she’d feel both – she had to escape, but regrets doing so. It’s too bad Beatty was given such a salacious script, because she could’ve brought a lot more to the role if given the chance. We also don’t get to see much interaction with Lizzie and a major force in her life: her sister, played by Ryan Murphy mainstay Billie Lourd, who’s essentially written off as a side character in this version of events. The writers had a ripe opportunity to explore feminism, revenge, and what drives women to commit unspeakable crimes. Instead, they chose to focus on over-sexualizing and sensationalizing a centuries-old true crime story for the modern crime junkie. What’s left is a hollow, glitteringly fictitious and modernized account of a legend spun out so far it barely resembles the story it sets out to tell.
There’s an interesting choice by the storytellers about halfway through the season to tie Borden’s case to another famous female killer: Aileen Wournos, played by Sarah Paulson. Paulson is by far the best performance of the series, as she completely encapsulates Wournos upon entering the season’s fourth episode. Obviously Charlize Theron is the gold standard here – she did win the Oscar for it, after all – but Paulson does a helluva job throwing caution to the wind and transforming into the blighted and fraught Wournos – both a victim and perpetrator in Murphy’s rendition. I appreciate the attempt to tie the two stories together (I really do), as the message they’re trying to send is one worth exploring. Victimized women are sometimes left with no other choice in life but to commit unspeakable crimes, and the men at fault are rarely held accountable. Unfortunately, these scenes prove more distracting than thematically resonant, making it difficult to justify devoting so much of the season’s back half to them. Wournos’s story is one that would be better served in isolation, and, frankly, one that has already been told before (though this is certainly not an invitation to make another show about it).
The production is what you’d expect: way too much for a show like this. There’s always a certain distinct visual element to a Ryan Murphy production – the overly glamorized, stylized, and cast of actors that look straight out of a popular teen drama. It’s a little campy and theatrical, with set pieces thrown into each episode, and intended to be binge-watched in a day. There’s terrible CGI with blood splatters that look like they’re shot out of a cannon. There’s way too many center-framed shots that seem lazy rather than deliberate. And the score is, well, a choice. When “Cuntology 101” by Lambrini Girls started to play when the girls concoct their murderous plot, I simply had to laugh. The formula for a Ryan Murphy production is 1) make everyone hot, 2) exploit what you can, and 3) make stuff up if you have to. As for the Emmys, I’d love to write this off as another gluttonous flash-in-the-pan crowdpleaser, but one must never discount Ryan Murphy. There’s a case to be made for Sarah Paulson’s performance, but that’s (hopefully) the ceiling.
Eight episodes is simply way too much time and effort to dedicate to this story without telling anything new that isn’t fictionalized. As with most Ryan Murphy productions, the story cares little to examine the “why” behind the supposed “monster,” instead focusing on how far to push the envelope in sensationalizing very real tragedies. It’s a series seemingly tailor-made for the true-crime obsessed who have turned killers into objects of fascination, perhaps in the most grotesque way. The central performances work when they need to, and it’s easy to understand why the series lends itself to an addictive, bingeable watch. But that may be precisely the problem: It’s so consumed with the mechanics of the story that it forgets to ask why this story needs to be told at all. Ultimately, what should feel unsettling instead becomes disturbingly easy to consume.
THE GOOD – Ella Beatty and Sarah Paulson bring rich performances to a bingeable watch of a familiar story.
THE BAD – It’s an overly-sexualized, exploitative, and salacious retelling of a story that seems to take no issue with making up details to fit the writers’ narrative for dramatic effect.
THE EMMY PROSPECTS – Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Anthology Series or Movie
THE FINAL SCORE – 3/10
