Monsters of God

To say all of this is eye-opening and disturbing doesn’t begin to cover it. But there’s also an element of sadness that Goode taps into, as he expounds on how man can indeed be the cruelest beast of all at times.

Monsters Of God shows that Eric Goode has cornered the market on docuseries that concentrates on the colorful personalities that surround the illegal possession of exotic animals, and those personalities are fascinating to watch.

Mr. Goode extracts remarkably candid admissions from his interview subjects—one, convicted drug trafficker Mario Tabraue (featured in “Tiger King”), remembers dismembering and burning the body of a federal informant. (He denies having murdered his own wife.) Some of the more intriguing figures receive little more than offhand references.

It all results in a series that’s more honestly watchable and less likely to attract rubber-necking viewers.

Monsters of God may lack that tight narrative thread that makes you want to recreate lockdown and spend five hours parked in front of the TV. But Goode is a conservationist as well as a film-maker, and it’s clear that he is interested in what became of the species whose existence was endangered by men like these.