Netflix's Ed Gein: A Mess in 8 Episodes

“The real Ed Gein was a monster. Netflix’s version is just a model with a bad accent.” 

 Just finished watching the new Netflix mess of a “story” about Ed Gein. There’s eight hours I’ll never get back. Netflix, as usual, is in the business of entertainment for profit. That means serving the widest possible audience—translation: the lowest common denominator. The real story of Ed Gein is horrifying, grotesque, and steeped in madness that even Poe or Lovecraft couldn’t dream up. What we get instead is a romanticized fever dream that tries to make America’s most infamous ghoul into a misunderstood heartthrob. 

Casting Crimes Let’s start with the first lie: Charlie Hunnam. Ed Gein was about 5'7", homely, and about as hygienic as a compost pile. Hunnam is six feet tall, handsome, and glowing with protein powder. The tone is set before the first line of dialogue — it’s a lie before it even begins. Then comes the voice. Gein’s real voice (and yes, there are recordings) had a plain Midwestern Wisconsin twang. Hunnam delivers… whatever this is. A bashful tween with a wandering Irish accent? My wife and I were howling. Probably not the emotional response the director was after. 

The Cross-Dressing Confusion Netflix takes every excuse to show Hunnam half-naked, oiled up, or draped in lingerie. There are reports that Gein fashioned suits of human skin — but the cross-dresser angle is largely speculative. Late in his life, Gein reportedly showed interest in Christine Jorgensen and wondered if he might be “transsexual.” (And for the MAGA crowd: no, your tax dollars did not fund Ed Gein’s transition.) This detail could have been handled with psychological nuance. Instead, it’s treated like a visual gimmick in a perfume commercial. 

Love in All the Wrong Places The filmmakers even give Gein a romantic subplot — a fiction born from long-debunked tabloid nonsense. Bernice Worden, one of Gein’s real victims, is rewritten into a flirtatious companion, which is both wildly inaccurate and disrespectful. At this point, historical accuracy has packed its bags and left for the weekend. 

Facts? Optional. Gein was convicted of one murder (Worden), accused of another (Mary Hogan), and suspected — never proven — of killing his brother. Netflix’s version inflates that into a mythic killing spree, complete with “flash-forwards” to Hitchcock, Tony Perkins, and Tobe Hooper, implying Gein’s crimes somehow birthed the entire horror genre. This mess also incorporates other serial killers as some sort of We Love Eddie G. Fan Club. It’s absurd. Half documentary, half hallucination, all nonsense. 

A Killer’s Psychology (The Real Stuff) I’ve followed serial killer pathology since reading The Deliberate Stranger forty years ago. I remember when Bundy, Gacy, and Dahmer dominated the headlines. Back when I was studying behavioral psych, I wondered what made a killer. The pattern I noticed: serial killers are socially invisible. They’re so lacking in personality that the world looks right past them. Mix in childhood trauma with a sprinkle of mental illness and you’ve got a recipe for horror. Even more revealing? They act in secrecy. They know what they’re doing is wrong. Ed Gein hid his crimes carefully. Madness, yes — but madness with a level of self-awareness. 

Final Verdict If you want facts about Ed Gein, read a book. If you want to see Charlie Hunnam awkwardly dancing in women’s underwear while doing a Midwestern-by-way-of-Dublin accent, Netflix has you covered. On the plus side, the cinematography is solid — nicely lit, well-framed, watchable. The direction? Somewhere between “art-school student film” and “lost season of American Horror Story.” 

Opinion: A fascinating true story buried under eight hours of Hollywood nonsense. 

Watch it if: you like good lighting, attractive murderers, and rewriting history. 

Skip it if: you prefer your true crime horror grounded in fact, not fantasy.