Charlie Hunnam has gone psycho in the teaser trailer for Monster: The Ed Gein Story.
Hunnam has taken on the role of the famed serial killer for the third season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan‘s Netflix anthology series. The horror offering releases all episodes Oct. 3 for what the streamer has called its most harrowing season yet.
The first footage (below) shows Gein’s home being investigated by police who are so disturbed they can barely go through what they find. The teaser trailer ends with a conversation between Gein and his mother (played by Laurie Metcalf) that is the thing of nightmares.
This first look follows the key art that recently introduced Hunnam as Gein, the infamous serial murderer and body snatcher often referred to as “the Butcher of Plainfield” who gained notoriety in the 1950s for his horrific crimes.
The narration in the trailer comes from Tom Hollander who is playing Alfred Hitchcock, as Monster: The Ed Gein Story will travel to Hollywood to explore the horror films that Gein inspired, including Psycho.
Brennan, Murphy and Hunnam spoke to Netflix’s Tudum about turning their lens on Gein, who is lesser known than their prior subjects. (Gein made a brief appearance in previous season Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, where he was played by Shane Kerwin.) “[Gein] is probably one of the most influential people of the 20th century, and yet people don’t know that much about him,” Murphy says. “He influenced some of the biggest serial killers of the 20th century… Ted Bundy, and on and on and on.”
To play Gein, Hunnam says he gained access to the only known recording of the killer, which was made two days after he was arrested. “It’s about an hour-and-10-minute interview with him, while he’s in custody. A lot of the musicality, and his inflection, and his choice of words, and where his energy sat, I was able to extract from it.”
Monster: The Ed Gein Story tells the story of how one simple man in Plainfield, Wisconsin, became “history’s most singular ghoul,” says the streamer, revealing to the world “the most horrific truth of all — that monsters aren’t born, they’re made … by us.”
Murphy told Tudum the thesis of every season is: Are monsters born or are they made? “I think in Ed’s case, it’s probably a little of both,” he says. Hunnam adds, “This is going to be the really human, tender, unflinching, no-holds-barred exploration of who Ed was and what he did. But who he was being at the center of it, rather than what he did.”
Here’s the official logline: “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.”
Monster: The Ed Gein Story.follows previous seasons of The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, respectively. Each cycle of the Monster franchise tackles a different true-crime story, following the massive success of the series’ 2022 debut.
The cast also includes Suzanna Son, with Vicky Krieps, Olivia Williams, Lesley Manville, Joey Pollari, Charlie Hall, Tyler Jacob Moore, Mimi Kennedy, Will Brill and Robin Weigert.
Executive producers are co-creators Murphy and Brennan, along with Max Winkler, Eric Kovtun, Scott Robertson, Nissa Diederich, Louise Shore, Carl Franklin and Hunnam. Brennan and Max Winkler are directors on the series; Brennan wrote all episodes.
