Netflix's Monsters Has People Angry At Ryan Murphy For A Familiar Reason

There are lots of reasons to be upset with some of the films and TV shows on Netflix. The service has a proclivity for pumping out forgettable streaming fare with alarming regularity, even while it also produces killer action thrillers like "Rebel Ridge." But more concerning than bland streaming "content" is the way in which other people's misery has produced some of the biggest hits in the streamer's history. This is especially true when it comes to true crime documentaries, but it was also the case with season one of Ryan Murphy's "Monster," which dramatized the real-life abominations carried out by notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Now, Murphy has taken over Netflix's top charts again with a new season of his true crime anthology series. This time, however, Murphy's bringing you the story of a murderous duo with "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story." The new season tells the story of brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez (Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch) who became infamous for murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez (Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny), back in 1989.

The show hit Netflix on September 19, 2024, and at the time of writing, it's the number one most-watched TV show on the streamer in 58 countries around the world (according to FlixPatrol). That means Netflix has a bonafide hit on their hands yet again — and this one comes with just as much, if not more controversy, than the last time Murphy gave us his take on a real-life crime odyssey. That is to say that people are very upset with the horror impresario and his "Monsters" show, which has provoked a backlash among critics, viewers, and the family themselves.

Ryan Murphy has been down this road before. The man responsible for "American Horror Story" and "The People Vs. O.J. Simpson," found himself at the center of a big controversy over "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" when it debuted in 2022. After being launched on Netflix with little fanfare — suggesting the streamer knew it had a potential lightning rod for controversy on its hands — the show did indeed prove to be one of the more contentious series in the company's extensive catalog. Murphy was accused of fetishizing and even celebrating Dahmer, played by Evan Peters, in such a way as to become the TV version of those people who write fan letters to serial killers once they've been locked up.

But it wasn't just critics and viewers that took Murphy to task. A relative of one of Dahmer's victims citicized the show for "retraumatizing" their family, claiming that he and the family had not been contacted prior to the show's debut and only found out about the whole project when it was released. Eric Perry, cousin of victim Errol Lindsey, also claimed the family were "pissed" and voiced his dismay at the way in which the series recreated his cousin "having an emotional breakdown in court in the face of the man who tortured and murdered her brother."

At the time, the production team defended the project as providing an insight into how societal factors such as race and sexuality played into Dahmer's killings and his ability to continue his spree unabated. Now, the whole torrid affair is playing out once again with "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story."

"Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story" chronicles the case of the titular brothers, who were convicted in 1996 for the murder of their parents back in 1989. While the prosecution argued that the pair were simply looking to collect their inheritance, the brothers themselves maintained that they were subjected to persistent physical and sexual abuse by their mother and father. Now serving life without the possibility of parole, Lyle and Erik still claim their actions were the result of this sustained abuse.

This all sounds like it could cause a firestorm of controversy if somebody were to dramatize the events surrounding this grim debacle. That's exactly what Ryan Murphy and Netflix have done with "Monsters," predictably upsetting pretty much everybody — even the millions of viewers around the world that had propelled the series to the number one spot on the Netflix TV charts.

The firestorm is well and truly raging, with this latest installment in the true crime drama series being described as "incestuous fanfic." Viewers are warning each other about one particular scene in "Monsters," while Vulture asked whether the show needed to "be so sexy." As writer Jen Chaney noted, the brothers themselves have "never said that they were involved in an incestuous relationship," though Lyle has confessed to, and apologized for, abusing his brother. Chaney further chastised the series and its creators for "undermin[ing] the seriousness of abuse and blur[ring] the lines between what's 'hot' and what is absolutely inappropriate and wrong."

Still, others defended the incest depicted in the show as a way to show how abuse had irrevocably altered the brothers' psychology. But a quick look at some of the promotional images for the series calls into question how serious Murphy's unflinching look at the psychological damage done to these boys really is. What's more, the incestuous element is only one aspect of this significant and widespread backlash.

Ryan Murphy has made a career out of hot people doing murder with the aforementioned "American Horror Story." But the whole thing becomes increasingly uncomfortable and ultimately controversial when Murphy deals with real-life stories of crime. "Monsters" is a prime example of that, not only because critics and viewers are speaking out against the show's portrayal of the Menendez brothers, but because members of the family themselves have claimed the series is completely inaccurate.

Erik Menendez released a statement condemning the show (via Variety). Posted to Twitter/X by Tammi Menendez, who married Erik in 1999, the statement is unrelenting in its critique of Murphy's series, claiming that it contains "ruinous character portrayals" that are "rooted in horrible and blatant lies." Erik goes on to state, "I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent." The brother also criticized the way in which the series took "the painful truths several steps backward — back through time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women."

Erik ends his statement by thanking those who have supported him and pointing out that "violence against a child creates a hundred horrendous and silent crime scenes darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamor." It's this glitter and glamor that's arguably at the heart of the backlash against "Monsters," which, however you try to spin it, does place this harrowing story behind a slick, sexy, premium drama veneer that inherently undermines the seriousness of the abuse being depicted. That said, as the viewership figures show, this is exactly the kind of media that we can't seem to get enough of at the same time. Netflix knows we love true crime, which is as big as it's ever been in genre media, and our insatiable appetite for this stuff is surely as big of a factor here as anything else.

With Netflix having greenlit season three of "Monster," which will star Charlie Hunnam as depraved monstrosity Ed Gein, there doesn't seem to be any kind of reckoning on the horizon, either — just more firestorms.