Don’t expect popular horror filmmaker Osgood Perkins to watch the latest installment of Ryan Murphy’s true-crime Monster anthology anytime soon.
Released October 3 on Netflix, Monster: The Ed Gein Story stars Charlie Hunnam as real-life suspected serial killer and graverobber Gein, who notoriously crafted paraphernalia and a “woman suit” from human remains acquired from graves he exhumed and from his two known female victims.
Gein’s gruesome crimes infamously inspired several fictional psychopaths, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho character Norman Bates, played by Perkins’ late father, Anthony, in the 1960 classic and its three sequels: Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986) and Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990).
Perkins, the director known for Longlegs (2024) and The Monkey (2025), also appeared in Psycho II (1983) alongside his father as Young Norman.
Speaking to TMZ about Murphy’s retelling of Gein’s story, 51-year-old Perkins said that he “wouldn’t watch it with a 10-foot-pole.”
He condemned the way streamers continually try to insert “glamorous and meaningful content” into true-crime stories, adding that they have become “increasingly devoid of context and that the Netflix-ization of real pain [ie the authentic human experiences wrought by ‘actual events’] is playing for the wrong team.”
The Independent has contacted Netflix and Murphy’s representative for comment.
Perkins’ criticism joins a host of Netflix subscribers who have also decried the show for “romanticizing” Gein.
While season three has been mostly acclaimed by viewers, the final episode received backlash over its decision to paint Gein in a sympathetic light — and to depict him as a saintly figure respected by other murderers.
“Not only is it an apology for Gein, it ends by turning him into a saintly figure, benevolently presiding over the world of serial killers, including TWO fantasy sequences where famous killers salute him,” one viewer said on X, with a second adding that towards the end of the series, it felt like, “I was being gaslit into feeling empathy for this man who murdered people.”
This certainly isn’t the first time Murphy has faced public outcry for his Monsters anthology. The first season, which focused on the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer, was also lambasted by viewers who felt it was exploitative.
Families of Dahmer’s victims spoke out, saying the series was re-traumatizing. A Milwaukee attorney, who previously represented a number of the families, later called on Murphy to share the profits with his former clients.
Meanwhile, in a February interview with The Independent, Perkins reflected on his father’s legacy.
“I saw him as a beautiful sort of instrument. It was always impressive,” Perkins said of the Psycho star, who died in 1992 of Aids-related pneumonia. “And then as I get older and am making my own things, I’ll sit and watch Psycho and just be like, ‘Wow, that’s a really special thing. That’s a one-in-a-million movie performance,’ and I feel a great deal of pride about it.”
