Netflix unleashes first MONSTER: THE ED GEIN STORY trailer, full of dancing with mommy issues

If you’re a fan of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s brand of true crime horror, then you’ll be glad to hear their latest season of Monster got its first trailer, this time focusing on the grisly case of Ed Gein. Like Dahmer and the Melendez Brothers before it, season 3 of the Netflix Original seems to be gearing up for another neon-heavy and highly sexualized interpretation of a notorious killer. This time, though, the killer comes with a lot of cultural baggage, for Gein was the inspiration behind Psycho’s Norman Bates, Wild Bill from Silence of the Lambs, and Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all of them horror classics that changed the face of the genre.

Also known as the Butcher of Plainfield, Gein was a serial killer and body snatcher that operated from 1947-1957 in Wisconsin. He confessed to killing two women and was charged with the desecration of nine graves with the intent of acquiring corpses to mutilate to fulfill his mad desires. He was suspected of at least 7 more killings, but lie detector tests and testimony from psychiatrists that treated him casted doubt on these accusations.

Gein used the body parts he collected to refashion the furniture he had his home. When the police finally caught up with him, a search of his house led to the discovery of chairs and wastebaskets made of human skin. They also found leggings made of leg skin and female skin masks.

The trailer for this new series finally reveals Charlie Hunnam’s Ed Gein transformation, from scarred face to soft mannerisms. The Sons of Anarchy actor looks to have dedicated a lot of energy into capturing the nervous energy that’s associated with the real killer.

Laurie Metcalf plays Gein’s mother, an intensely religious and fiery woman that saw the devil in everything she deemed not Godly. She tried so hard to steer her son away from the Dark One’s influences that she ended up driving him into an Oedipal complex (which explains why Gein put together a skin suit made from parts taken from multiple female corpses to “become” his mother).

Author Robert Bloch shaped the persona of Norman Bates for his book Psycho around this bit of Gein’s psyche, which would end up being one of fiction’s most iconic villains in both prose and film (the latter thanks to Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of the book).

As was the case with The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, it’s safe to say the series will generate controversy thanks to Murphy and Brennan’s signature pop culture-infused take on actual murderers. The trailer already makes this apparent. For instance, it features the Pet Shop Boys’s It’s a Sin as its theme song, hinting at themes that pit sex, violence, and religion against each other to the beat of a popular synth-pop song from 1987.

At one point, Hunnam is seen throwing down some fairly modern dance moves while dressed in a skin suit that makes him look like a woman (though not a living one). Victims are presented in oversaturated colors that evoke the times the story is set in, but there’s a general clean aesthetic to the setting that further accentuates the stylized coolness and sexiness the production is going for.

These same visual sensibilities could also be appreciated in the Dahmer series, in which the killer was shot in ways that highlighted his body’s more chiseled dimensions. These characters ultimately look more like fashion models than disturbed criminals. It looks like Gein is headed in the same direction.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story premieres on October 3^rd on Netflix. All episodes will be available on day one, ready-made for binging. Will Ed Gein become the newest killer fans will obsess over to the point of dressing up as him for Halloween? If Murphy and Brennan have any say in it, he probably will.