It's hard to look away from Netflix's first trailer for "Monster: The Ed Gein Story." The third installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan‘s true crime anthology, which lands on Netflix on October 3, sees "Sons of Anarchy" lead Charlie Hunnam step into the skin-lined shoes of the infamous serial killer, and the trailer proves the streaming service wasn't exaggerating when it promised this'll be the most disturbing "Monster" chapter yet.
In the trailer, which you can check out below, we get a glimpse into a house of horrors so gruesome that it would redefine the American nightmare. Hunnam's Gein is unsettlingly calm and polite as he scouts for his next victim, undresses a corpse, and dances around in a suit of human flesh. It's a disturbing trailer, and given the long list of horrors on Gein's real-life rap sheet, the worst is yet to come.
In a moment of fourth-wall breaking, the trailer calls out the audience's insatiable appetite for true crime tales. “You’re the one who can’t look away,” says Hunnam's Gein while staring directly at the camera. Anyone else feel called out?
From Jeffrey Dahmer to the Menendez Brothers, Netflix’s "Monster" anthology has never shied away from America’s darkest true-crime stories. The third season dives into the story of Ed Gein, who terrorized Wisconsin in the 1950s by murdering women, robbing graves, and crafting macabre trophies from human remains. His grisly legacy inspired horror classics like "Psycho," "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and "The Silence of the Lambs."
Netflix's official synopsis reads: “Serial killer. Grave robber. Psycho. In the frozen fields of 1950s rural Wisconsin, a friendly, mild-mannered recluse named Eddie Gein lived quietly on a decaying farm – hiding a house of horrors so gruesome it would redefine the American nightmare. Driven by isolation, psychosis, and an all-consuming obsession with his mother, Gein’s perverse crimes birthed a new kind of monster that would haunt Hollywood for decades. From 'Psycho' to 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' to 'The Silence of the Lambs,' Gein’s macabre legacy gave birth to fictional monsters born in his image and ignited a cultural obsession with the criminally deviant. Ed Gein didn’t just influence a genre — he became the blueprint for modern horror.”
Hunnam leads a stacked cast that includes Emmy winner Laurie Metcalf ("The Conners") as Gein’s overbearing mother Augusta, Tom Hollander ("The White Lotus") as "Psycho" director Alfred Hitchcock, and Suzanna Son ("Red Rocket") as Gein's only friend Adeline Atkins. The trailer also revealed that Addison Rae will star as one of Gein's alleged victims. In a Netflix press release, Rae said she signed onto the project because of the impressive talent both on-screen and behind the scenes.
“I’m such a big fan of Charlie, and he’s so amazing. And Laurie and Suzanna — I got to work with so many people that I’ve loved their work,” she said. “I’ve never worked on a production that felt so intentional in every piece. And I think that is really inspiring to be around.”
All eight episodes of "The Ed Gein Story" premiere on Netflix on Friday, October 3, just in time for spooky season.
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