Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story

“The Lizzie Borden Story” offers something refreshing and wholly unique to the “Monster” canon.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story tells Borden’s story without most of the gimmickry we see in Brennan and Murphy’s productions. There’s still time for things to fly off the rails, but we’re enjoying the relative restraint so far.

While it has some entertaining and even emotional moments, and a few fine performances, Monster’s fourth season is too scattershot and tonally inconsistent.

There’s a version of this season that could say something profound about the anger that might drive a woman to murder. But that would involve Monster fully understanding what, exactly, women might be angry about.

Krieps is terrific and far more interesting than Beatty’s Lizzie, while Paulson seems to be playing in an entirely different, equally compelling show. The blood flows freely, the dialogue gets increasingly outrageous, and the production never seems particularly concerned with whether any of it could have happened. .... If that sounds like a mess … it is.

Setting aside its twisted, lazy take on feminism — including the unintended implication that women should be allowed to kill any asshole they please — “Monster” Season 4 isn’t just aspiring for little else beyond recycling its own previous commentary.

The Lizzie Borden Story has all the depth of a papercut. .... It feels more like a failure of direction and conception, especially as Lizzie’s characterization switches partway through the series.

The 4th installment of Ryan Murphy’s “Monster” series focuses on the legendary axe murderer. Since it takes place in the late 1800s, there less factual information, which means plenty of creative liberty has been taken with the story. Ella Beatty is effective in the title role with Vicky Krieps playing the housemaid (later becomes her love interest). Rebecca Hall plays the incredibly cruel stepmother with Charlie Hunnam returning after his brilliant turn as the previous series’ Ed Gein to play the father. As in that series, the writers added a contemporary parallel reference with Aileen Wuornos that features Murphy’s fave Sarah Paulson in heavy prosthetics and even heavier histrionics. The performances are all compelling and the murders are expectedly bloody. Between them is a dark, dark creation of Borden’s family life. The French book side trip and Wuornos subplot drag the story down and by the final eps, things have gotten tedious. Still, there are plenty of creepy moments as the show delves into the personalities and relationships. Every scene plays out slowly, trying to build the tension, but it sometimes spends too much time and things get repetitive. This series mostly succeeds thanks to the strong performances and is disturbingly fascinating.

Features strong performances and stunning cinematography, yet the glamorization of the murder is glaringly obvious. Furthermore, the feminist narrative woven around the protagonist—and Aileen Wuornos—completely distorts what the cause actually stands for. It amounts to a **** of violence and marks the most tedious, pointless season of the anthology series to date.

La partie consacrée à Lizzie Borden est malheureusement une grosse déception. C’est beaucoup trop long et assez ennuyant, avec une histoire qui peine à maintenir l’intérêt. La fin reste ok, mais ça ne suffit pas à **** l’ensemble. Petite parenthèse quand même : les trois premières parties de Monstres étaient incroyables, avec Dahmer, Ed Gein et les frères Menendez, chacune ayant sa propre ambiance et son intérêt.

Loved all the other seasons but this is just a mess. It shows how weak the source material is when the show is so padded with fluff, this is 4 episodes max even 3 but 8 is pushing it. Its well acted and well shot its just boring as hell. Avoid if you like the others in the series

I'm all for creative freedom but the majority of this is just made up, like what are we even doing here.