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Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix is Gorgeous But Infuriating
The storytelling is genuinely impressive. The historical accuracy? We left that in 1892.
I’m the exact target audience for this show, and I need you to understand that before I start complaining.
I watch true crime the way other people watch cooking shows. Compulsively, constantly, while eating dinner. The Lizzie Borden case has lived rent-free in my head since the Buzzfeed Unsolved episode years ago. So when Netflix dropped all eight episodes of Monster Season 4 and I saw it was covering Borden, Aileen Wuornos, AND Elizabeth Báthory? I cleared my entire evening. Made a snack. Put my phone on Do Not Disturb. Locked in.
The way this season weaves between timelines, between women, between centuries of violence and rage and consequence? Genuinely well done. The storytelling structure impressed me more than any previous Monster season. Past bleeding into present, real history colliding with dramatized fury, Lizzie's story folding into Aileen's like they were always meant to be told in the same breath.
On a craft level, the execution is thoughtful and layered in a way I did not expect from this franchise. But then Ryan Murphy had to Ryan Murphy all over it, and now I have a migraine.
TMJ Rating: 🪓🪓🪓/5
What You Need to Know
Fall River, Massachusetts, 1892. Lizzie Borden (Ella Beatty) is a young woman trapped in a suffocating household with a frugal father (Charlie Hunnam), a cruel stepmother (Rebecca Hall), and zero control over her own life.
The show dramatizes the infamous hatchet murders of her parents and the sensational trial that followed, while weaving in the stories of serial killer Aileen Wuornos (Sarah Paulson) and 16th-century Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory.
What Worked in The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix
Vicky Krieps as Bridget Sullivan is far and away the MVP of this season. Her storyline had me completely locked in. There's a Saltburn quality to the way Bridget navigates the Borden household, seducing and scheming and surviving, and every scene with her crackles with tension the rest of the show desperately needs.
When she disappears from the story for stretches, you feel the hole she leaves behind.
Charlie Hunnam chews scenery with both hands as Andrew Borden, and somehow it works more than it should. His backstory episode adds real dimension to a character the show otherwise treats like a cartoon villain.
And Sarah Paulson in that final episode? The recreations of Aileen Wuornos's last interviews are riveting. Cold, grounded, devastating. It's the single best stretch of television this season produces.
The production design across the board is gorgeous. When this show is colorful and outside, it looks like a painting. The period costuming is immaculate. The anachronistic soundtrack choices are genuinely fun. Cherry Bomb playing over a cleaning montage? I was into it.
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Where I Started Side-Eyeing My Screen
I know the Lizzie Borden case. I've read about it. I've watched documentaries. And every 15 minutes I found myself going "wait, that's not how that happened" or "I don't remember that being a thing at all."
The show has Borden and Bridget as full co-conspirators who planned the murders together. It has Nance O'Neill coaching Lizzie through her trial with acting lessons before they'd even met in real life (they didn't meet until 1904, a full 12 years after the murders).
It has Aileen Wuornos worshipping Lizzie Borden as some feminist icon, which has zero historical basis. It has Lizzie becoming a suffragette and fighting for women's voting rights, which never happened. It even rearranges the Bertha Manchester murder to happen before the Borden killings, when it occurred almost a year later, while Lizzie was literally sitting in jail.
This is an unsolved mystery. The whole appeal is that we don't know what happened. And Ryan Murphy looked at that beautiful ambiguity and said: "What if I made up a completely different version and filmed it really prettily?"
The creative liberties piled up until I couldn't tell what was real anymore, which is a genuinely irresponsible thing to do with a true crime story this well-known.
Rebecca Hall as Abby Borden is the biggest casualty of this approach. The character is so cartoonishly evil, so one-dimensionally wicked, that every scene with her feels like a Disney villain wandered onto the wrong set. When the show tries to humanize her in episode four, it's too late. You've spent three hours making her a parody.
My Final Verdict
When it works, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix works beautifully. The structure is ambitious, Krieps and Paulson deliver performances that deserve better writing, and the visual storytelling has moments of real brilliance.
But the relentless fictionalization undermines the entire project. This is a true crime anthology that seems increasingly uninterested in the truth, and for someone who loves this case, that stings.
Ryan Murphy made a beautiful show that frequently forgets it's supposed to be telling a real story. If you can separate the two, you'll probably have a better time than I did.
