Ed Gein vs. Dahmer vs. Menendez: Ryan Murphy's Monster Anthology Ranked From Most Haunting to Least
Netflix’s Monster redefined bingeable fear: Dahmer exploded on the platform, earning raves while making viewers eye every new acquaintance. With Ryan Murphy’s saga poised to return, the real question isn’t if you’ll watch—it’s how well you’ll sleep after.
Ryan Murphy keeps turning true crime into primetime comfort food for people who like to sleep with the lights on. Netflix’s Monster anthology is the big swing: each season locks onto a notorious case and wrings it for dread, psychology, and controversy. If you’re wondering which one will actually get under your skin vs. which one plays more like a legal chess match, here’s how they stack up for me.
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Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022) — the one that got everybody talking
Murphy and Ian Brennan co-created and ran this first season, and it shows. Evan Peters goes full psychological horror as Jeffrey Dahmer, and the show does not look away from the violence. It is graphic, it is queasy, and it is uncomfortably intimate. If you saw that clip Netflix shared where a victim actually escapes and the police walk him back inside Dahmer’s apartment, you know exactly the kind of gut-punch this thing delivers.
Quick reality check on the footprint: it blew up. We’re talking over 1 billion hours viewed, making it one of Netflix’s most-watched ever. Awards-wise, it nabbed two Primetime Emmys (Niecy Nash-Betts took Supporting Actress) and Evan Peters was up for Lead Actor. It also landed Golden Globe nods for Best Limited Series and for Peters. The score is by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, which explains the moody, subterranean hum running under the whole thing.
Details for the completists: it hit Netflix on September 21, 2022; it’s a biographical crime drama/true crime hybrid set across Ohio and Wisconsin (Milwaukee looms large) and covers crimes from 1978–1991. Beyond the killer, the show drills into police failures, race, LGBTQ community vulnerability, and the ethics of telling these stories at all. Richard Jenkins and Molly Ringwald play Lionel and Shari Dahmer, and Niecy Nash-Betts is the beating heart as neighbor Glenda Cleveland. Ten episodes, zero filler, and a lot of stomach-churning realism.
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Monster: The Ed Gein Story (2025) — nightmare fuel in a cornfield
The latest season goes rural and turns the dread up to 11. Charlie Hunnam plays Ed Gein, the Wisconsin murderer and grave-robber whose crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs. This one leans hard into psychological horror: necrophilia, grave-robbing, and truly morbid home decor are depicted with a level of detail that will make your scalp tingle. It’s grisly, but the restraint is in the atmosphere — long, suffocating stretches on that isolated farmhouse where your brain fills in the worst possibilities.
It’s Murphy and Brennan again behind the wheel, with eight episodes that dropped October 3, 2025 on Netflix. The setting sticks to late 1940s–1950s Plainfield, Wisconsin — the farmhouse and the small town are practically characters. Themes include rural isolation, trauma, and how Gein’s crimes basically seeded modern horror. Laurie Metcalf shows up in support alongside Addison Rae and Suzanna Son, which is a casting swing I didn’t see coming but it works in this weird, unnerving way. Awards chatter will come in the 2025/2026 cycle, but this is exactly the kind of craft-heavy horror that tends to get noticed.
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Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024) — gripping, but more courtroom than boogeyman
This one plays like a high-gloss legal thriller that keeps daring you to pick sides, then punishes you for it. The 1989 Beverly Hills case of Lyle and Erik Menendez isn’t serial-killer horror, so the fear factor is lower, but the show is still tense and deeply uncomfortable. Nicholas Alexander Chavez (Lyle) and Cooper Koch (Erik) anchor it, with Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny as Jose and Kitty Menendez. Nathan Lane and Ari Graynor round out a loaded supporting bench.
It launched September 19, 2024 on Netflix and uses a Rashomon-style structure — same events, different perspectives, and you cannot fully trust any narrator. We’re largely confined to the Menendez mansion and the aftermath, which keeps it claustrophobic. The themes are as ugly as you’d expect: familial abuse, murder, and a media circus that never met a boundary it wouldn’t cross. The season stirred up controversy over an incest depiction, drew reactions from the real Menendez brothers, and got dinged by critics for explicit content — so, yes, it sparked debate.
Industry note: it’s a true crime/biographical drama entry that pulled in 11 Emmy nominations (including Limited/Anthology Series and Lead Actor) and took home one win. On the Golden Globes side, it scored nominations for Best Limited Series, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor. Nine episodes, smartly paced, and far more about strategy and trauma than blood and guts.
What’s next: Netflix has greenlit a fourth season, this time centered on Lizzie Borden — the woman accused of axe-murdering her father and stepmother in 1892. Expect a different flavor of horror, but the franchise’s appetite for moral gray areas is not going anywhere.
Which season rattled you the most? Drop your pick in the comments. All current Monster entries are streaming now on Netflix in the U.S.