NetflixRyan Murphy loves portraits of complicated people, both fictional and nonfictional. In one realm, he created shows about horror stories and theatre kids, and in the other, he’s crafted portraits of O.J. Simpson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the Menendez brothers. He often has a penchant for sensationalizing, but that’s usually balanced by a blunt portrayal of how horrific acts affect everyone in a community. However, in the latest iteration of his Monster anthology series, Monster: The Ed Gein Story, the writer’s penchant for going larger than life spirals out of control. The entire series blurs the line between true crime and myth with the hopes of holding a mirror up to the entire industry, but only ends up making the problem even worse. Ed Gein is known as the “Godfather” of serial murderers, and it’s clear to see why: his habit of grave robbing and crafting grotesque items out of human skin inspired the fictional Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs; his creation of skin “masks” inspired Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; and his obsession with his mother inspired Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho, which went on to be adapted to the screen by Alfred Hitchcock. All of these projects are honored in this series in different ways: we see the fictional Buffalo Bill dancing intercut with Ed doing the same in his “skin suit” and Tobe Hooper becoming inspired to create a new kind of horror movie after realizing how Ed Gein was inspired by horrific images from concentration camps, but the most screentime is devoted to the creation of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock is portrayed as being directly inspired by the Ed Gein story while creating Psycho, but the two were more or less separate. | NetflixIt all starts with a scene of Hitchcock (Tom Hollander) having dinner with Bloch (Ethan Sandler) and learning all about Gein’s story. That’s followed by a portrayal of Anthony Perkins (Joey Pollari) trying on a wig and robe for his boyfriend to get into the character of Norman Bates. But then, the way it portrays the production of Psycho is completely apocryphal. If Monster is to be believed, then Psycho was a lightly dramatized version of the Ed Gein story, with one key scene depicting Hitchcock leading Perkins through the set, calling it a complete replica of Gein’s house. What follows is a perfect microcosm of the flaws with this series: Hitchcock tells him to look in the icebox, and we see Perkins look horrified. Hitchock tells him he’s looking at “nine preserved vulvas.” At first, it’s comforting that we don’t see the body parts, just the reaction to them and a very short flash, but the very next shot is a long close-up of the frozen genitals. When Perkins looks up, Hitchcock is nowhere to be seen, casting doubt that anything had happened at all, which doesn’t really make sense since Gein is the only other character shown to have this reality-blurring experience.This series constantly critiques the human desire to lionize the villains of the world, often through Gein’s own fantasy sequences. In the episode “Ham Radio,” for example, he has a fantastical conversation with Nazi wife Ilse Koch (Vicky Krieps), whom he read about in comic books. (In real life, it’s likely Ilse didn’t do most of what she became known for.) Anthony Perkins takes a (historically dubious) look into Ed Gein’s world in Monster: The Ed Gein Story. | Netflix“They make monsters, the people, because they need someone to blame for the acts of the human condition,” she says. “So they take the monster, and they catch it, and they put it on the village square, and they hang it for everyone to see, to spit on it, and to bond over.” It seems to be chastising the world for mythologizing these true crime stories. But if anything is doing the mythologizing, it’s the series itself. Anthony Perkins didn’t have the lines between himself and Norman Bates blur through fantasy; he was an actor who took a job. Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t trying to tell the Ed Gein story on the big screen; he was trying to adapt a book. The entire Psycho storyline has very little to do with Gein himself: it’s a TV scene about a movie about a book about him, but the series still tries to draw a straight line. The final moments of the series show teens attempting to steal Gein’s headstone. One wanders away, only to be confronted by Buffalo Bill, Leatherface, and Norman Bates, only for them to be replaced by Gein himself. But because we mostly see Perkins out of character, to the audience, this isn’t Norman Bates, this is Anthony Perkins, and frankly, he doesn’t deserve to be roped into this story. Ed Gein may have inspired countless pop culture villains, but that’s no reason to paint those works as glorifying him. To quote another horror movie, the call is coming from inside the house. Monster: The Ed Gein Story is now streaming on Netflix.