TL;DR: Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story boasts excellent performances and genuine emotional power, but its determination to simplify Lizzie into a sympathetic figure robs a fascinating historical mystery of some much-needed moral ambiguity.

 

Lizzie Borden has survived more than a century as both historical figure and pop-culture boogeywoman, which makes her almost suspiciously perfect material for Monster. Netflix’s anthology has never been shy about turning infamous crimes into sprawling psychological dramas, but Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story takes a noticeably different swing. Instead of asking us to stare into the darkness and wonder what created a monster, this eight-episode season spends much of its time questioning whether Lizzie deserves that label in the first place.

That approach gives the season its most interesting ideas and creates some of its biggest problems. With Ella Beatty playing Lizzie, Vicky Krieps as Bridget Sullivan, Charlie Hunnam as Andrew Borden, Rebecca Hall as Abby Borden and Sarah Paulson appearing as Aileen Wuornos, this is a stacked production wrestling with abuse, misogyny, sexuality, revenge and the stories society tells about violent women. Unfortunately, it occasionally wrestles those themes straight into a headlock. When The Lizzie Borden Story trusts its characters, it can be surprisingly affecting. When it starts explaining its thesis, subtlety packs a suitcase and quietly leaves Fall River.

This Lizzie Borden story is more tragedy than true-crime nightmare

The series presents Lizzie as an awkward, sensitive woman trapped inside an oppressive household and an equally restrictive society. Her father Andrew is depicted as cruel and misogynistic, while stepmother Abby is violently abusive. Bridget’s arrival gives Lizzie something she has been denied: a person who broadens her understanding of the world while treating her as someone worthy of affection. Their relationship gradually becomes the emotional backbone of the season rather than merely another piece of true-crime machinery.

That choice works because it shifts attention away from the inevitable question of when the axe will fall. The stronger material is about what happens psychologically before and after violence, and about people convincing themselves that an unbearable situation leaves them with unbearable solutions. The series also threads Aileen Wuornos through the narrative nearly a century later, using her fascination with Lizzie to connect two women transformed into cultural symbols by murder. It is an ambitious parallel, but also where the writing begins flashing its thematic objectives like a giant quest marker hovering above an NPC.

Ella Beatty and Vicky Krieps give the series its emotional pulse

Beatty’s Lizzie is most compelling when the script allows uncertainty and vulnerability to coexist. There is dignity to the performance without the need for grand theatrical gestures, and that restraint helps sell a character who could easily have become either a gothic caricature or a simplistic victim. Her chemistry with Krieps gives the season warmth, and their relationship provides something emotionally tangible underneath all the historical revisionism and ideological debate.

Krieps has the tougher assignment because Bridget is written with deliberately modern attitudes that can sometimes make her feel as though she has wandered through a temporal portal and landed in Victorian Massachusetts. Yet Krieps grounds her with enough conviction that the character survives the occasional anachronistic flourish. Their scenes together are effective because the relationship feels less like a plot device and more like the rare space in which Lizzie can imagine another version of herself. Whenever the series focuses on that intimacy instead of trying to turn every conversation into a manifesto, it becomes considerably more powerful.

Rebecca Hall understands exactly what kind of show she is in

Then there is Rebecca Hall, apparently arriving with a personal mission to steal every scene not securely bolted to the floor. Abby could easily have been nothing more than the wicked stepmother archetype, but Hall gives the character enough personality and history to make her ugliness more interesting. The show does not excuse Abby, yet it allows glimpses of the suffering that helped shape her, creating precisely the sort of contradiction it strangely refuses to grant Lizzie as freely.

Sarah Paulson similarly finds genuine anguish inside the Wuornos storyline whenever the writing stops using her as a thematic narrator. Paulson’s material dealing with trauma and the approach of execution carries real emotional weight, but the constant effort to connect Wuornos and Borden can become painfully explicit. Monster already has the ingredients for an interesting conversation about gender, violence and cultural mythology. It does not need to circle them in red marker and write “THE POINT” beside them.

The biggest mystery is why Monster is afraid of Lizzie’s ambiguity

This is where The Lizzie Borden Story becomes frustrating. Lizzie Borden remains fascinating partly because certainty is impossible, yet the series seems reluctant to embrace that ambiguity. Its version of Lizzie is pushed so firmly toward sympathetic victimhood that the moral complexity of the story begins shrinking. The result is peculiar: a series ostensibly interested in challenging simplistic narratives ends up creating another one.

There is a much richer character waiting inside the contradiction between victimhood and violence. Sympathy does not require sainthood, and exploring Lizzie’s potential darkness would not automatically invalidate the abuse or oppression the series wants to examine. Quite the opposite. Allowing her to be compassionate, damaged, selfish, frightening and loving at different moments would make the central questions substantially harder — and therefore substantially more interesting. Instead, the show sometimes behaves as though viewers might revoke their empathy subscription the second Lizzie becomes genuinely uncomfortable.

The final stretch suffers from the same desire to cover everything. True-crime celebrity, public infamy, forgiveness and women’s suffrage all enter the conversation as the narrative jumps forward, while Lizzie and Bridget’s story reaches for an emotional resolution that does not quite carry the accumulated weight it should. There are still effective moments, but the season begins to resemble a browser with 27 tabs open and no idea which one is playing music.

Verdict

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is messy, provocative and far more emotionally effective than its bluntest writing suggests. Ella Beatty and Vicky Krieps give its central relationship genuine tenderness, Sarah Paulson brings bruising humanity to Aileen Wuornos, and Rebecca Hall delivers the season’s most deliciously complicated performance. There is enough gothic melodrama and unapologetic weirdness here to keep the eight episodes entertaining even when the storytelling wanders.

But the season’s determination to make Lizzie sympathetic ultimately makes her less interesting. A story built around one of America’s most enduring historical mysteries should thrive on uncertainty, contradiction and uncomfortable questions. Instead, Monster too often supplies its own answers before viewers have finished asking them. True-crime fans who prefer psychological ambiguity may find that frustrating, while viewers interested in character-driven historical melodrama will probably get considerably more from it. It is compelling television with some terrific performances, but the sharper, stranger and morally messier version of this story remains tantalisingly out of reach.