Critic Reviews

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

After the bloodletting, “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story” flashes back four months, which is where the show gets especially juicy with pulp.

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.

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.

Everything is heightened, which is both a compliment – this is by some way the most glamorous butchery I have ever seen on screen – and a criticism (because it’s questionable whether murder should ever look this cool).

While it wishes it were a complex Thelma & Louise-style statement about women, abuse, and revenge, it doesn't trust the audience enough and instead gives us a cross between a lecture and a fairy tale.

Netflix has delivered another rendition of “Monster” that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be and, like the others in this anthology, desperately tries to justify its macabre, compelling existence.

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

A miniseries with no clear point and nothing to add to its worn out story beyond a fresh coat of red. That may change as the saga unfolds, but within its first episode, the new Monster justifies its existence in only the most sordid details.

A miniseries with no clear point and nothing to add to its worn out story beyond a fresh coat of red. That may change as the saga unfolds, but within its first episode, the new Monster justifies its existence in only the most sordid details.