Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story (2024) Cre: Ryan Murphy
Instagram post:
Dramatised retellings of true crime cases are very tricky to do correctly - that is to say, tactfully, and with respect to the victims. This was my main concern when I saw that the next iteration of Ryan Murphy's 'Monsters' limited series would follow the Menendez brothers case.
I approached this nine episode limited series with caution, which very quickly began to feel warranted. As I feared, the series made too light of the murders at various points, especially earlier on in the series. There were moments where it legitimately made a mockery of some of the events, which felt in very bad taste to me. Comedy in a show like this did not feel like a good move. It was just insensitive.
Understandably, there were some very heavy themes addressed and presented in the show - a lot of it centering around cycles of abuse, in various forms. As such, I spent a lot of time feeling uncomfortable, which, in fairness, is fairly inevitable because of the source material. Some of the dialogue in particular was full of thematically difficult topics - I do think this was done quite well, for the most part.
Visually, some of the show was excellently filmed and edited. The episode comprised of extended takes was particularly good, jn that sense. The use of colour, the set design, the props and the costume designs were all excellent too. I do think that the not-so-subtle product placement of certain soda companies was a bizarre inclusion, however.
A big issue with this series, as indeed any production of this type, is that a lot of the events that it portrays are, at best, from a legal perspective, alleged. I'm not saying which parts of the case were true or not, but when you do that in a dramatised show, you become liable to bias.
I think that both Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez displayed some very strong, emotive and believable acting, at times, throughout thus series. However, there were also occasions in which they seemed to be parodying more than acting, which definitely wasn't so good. Of the two, I think Chavez was better on a more consistent basis, but when it came to the most emotional scenes, Koch was the more believable.
Chloë Sevigny and Javier Bardem were both sublime, unsurprisingly, considering their acting pedigree. Bardem in particular showed some incredible versatility, and felt extremely believable. Sevigny had a few episodes were she shone so bright with her emotional acting. I was thoroughly impressed by the pair of them.
There were also several excellent performances from the supporting cast, although there were four that stood out significantly more for their acting; Ari Graynor - she had some sublime acting in the final two episodes, as well as Nathan Lane, Dallas Roberts and Leslie Grossman.
Overall, I have very mixed feelings about this series. I definitely didn't like it as much as the Dahmer series. I think this one did nowhere near as good a job at respecting the real people involved, and I think it leaned a lot more on alleged occurances, rather than fact, which is very risky with such a divisive case. I think, while the series did several things well, it did a lot of things poorly, or in poor taste.
Comments