During the tabloid-crazed ’90s, major networks often filled their airtime with hastily produced movies based on various sordid or sensational news stories. Teenage shooter Amy Fisher, assaulted skater Nancy Kerrigan, the Menendez brothers who murdered their parents, and, of course, O.J. Simpson. In the streaming era, these stories are often stripped of their long-quick currency, reevaluated, and expanded into in-depth miniseries, aiming for some measure of fame rather than a cheap share of viewership. I am. No one has been more prolific at this form of cultural reform than producer Ryan Murphy, so it can be difficult to keep his anthology series all straight. Are the Menendez brothers charged as American Crime Story on FX or Monster on Netflix? Is American Horror Story off-limits? After all, many of these are real horror stories, reenacted by top-notch ensembles.
Coincidentally, the Menendez brothers have the dubious honor of following Jeffrey Dahmer in Season 2 of Netflix’s Monsters (now plural Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story) . Over the course of nine episodes, Murphy’s frequent collaborator Ian Brennan takes on the lives of Eric (Cooper Koch) and Lyle (who was convicted of murdering their parents Jose (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloë Sevigny)). Explore the history and psychology surrounding Nicholas Alexander Chavez. ). The first episode follows the brothers in the weeks leading up to their 1989 murder and their arrest, starting with a very awkward funeral at the Directors Guild facility since Jose was in the film industry, and then cutting back to the story briefly. Family dysfunction, a murder plot, and flashbacks to the murder itself. Right from the get-go, we were struck by Murphy’s penchant for creepy, spectacular horror and the more steady gaze of the filmmakers he employs, including noir specialist Carl Franklin (who directed the first two episodes). There is a tension between them that is not always productive.
At first glance, the strategy is to give the audience the gory, gossipy content they expect, then zoom in on the disturbing ambiguity that sometimes isn’t, giving multiple accounts of the lead-up to the crime and its aftermath. The goal is to complete the process from the perspective of This means that later episodes are (relatively) more focused than earlier episodes. This is especially true of the game’s game-changing fifth installment. The series features a 35-minute conversation in which Eric’s lawyer Leslie Abramson (Ari Greiner) interrogates Eric about the horrific abuse he allegedly suffered from his family, especially Eric. father. This episode’s director, Michael Uppendahl, begins with a static shot of Koch with Greiner’s back to the camera and gradually pushes him into close-up throughout the episode, filling it in heartbreakingly candid and gruesome detail. is conveying. Koch comes across as a permanently scarred boy, more so than in the scenes where Lyle confronts Chavez, who plays his older brother, as if he’s made up an impression of Tom Cruise.
But in the next episode (something of an origin story for Jose and Kitty), the atmosphere returns to the semi-mysterious, semi-inexplicable dysfunction of the rich family. Even though the specter of multigenerational abuse creeps into this story, repeated glimpses into the psychology of the Menendez family’s parents fail to yield much insight. Especially since the show’s attempts to blend multiple perspectives end up going back and forth endlessly. Fourth rug pull. Bardem’s performance is shaped to emphasize the father’s monstrousness, whatever its “true” scale, but later episodes reveal what the brothers have concocted (and who is more likely to fabricate it). There is even more speculation as to whether this was the case.
Perhaps it seems that this is multifaceted. Instead, it’s an exhausting, repetitive alternation between two overplayed sounds. The brothers as victims, twisted and broken by years of abuse, and the brothers as delusional, sloppy, and possibly sociopathic criminals. It doesn’t matter all that much that actors like Greiner and Bardem deftly hint at the basis of genuine character beneath a deliberately inconsistent script. In fact, the series’ best elements, like the performances and the unforgettable fifth episode, only throw it further off balance.
Perhaps it’s simply a matter of whether the material really requires 8 or 9 hours. Sure, it deserves more nuance than the cheap 96-minute network TV fare of the time, but does it really need to be the length of four feature films (in the 1990s)? (This amount of content about the Menendez case could have taken up most of a week on the prime-time schedule) Monsters makes this epic by connecting the events to the larger story of Los Angeles in the ’90s. I’m trying to justify the length. – riots, earthquakes, and, yes, OJ himself – and especially with the crime writer character played by Nathan Lane. Admittedly, the drama has some very elusive moments, but in the end, it’s as if Murphy has burned out while inexplicably filibustering about late 20th century true crime lore. It is performed. Maybe it’s time to take a break from tabloid lawsuits.
