Monster: The Ed Gein Story is not merely about one man and his atrocities; it is about the deepest corners of the human need to make sense of monstrosity. The series retells the story of Ed Gein — the quiet Wisconsin farmer whose crimes in the 1950s shocked an America that prided itself on decency and order. Yet beneath its macabre details, the Netflix retelling becomes a haunting meditation on loneliness, repression, and the stories we invent about evil to feel safe from it.
As a storyteller, I find Monster: The Ed Gein Story enthralling not because of its horror, but because of its silence. It is a narrative carved from stillness: the stoic Midwest landscape, the small-town kitchens, the isolating barns — places made unsettling precisely by how ordinary they appear. The first scenes draw us into a world where quiet is the dominant sound, where absence speaks louder than screams. That silence becomes the film’s thesis: what monstrous stories are born when a man lives so long outside the sound of empathy?
Ed Gein, played with eerie restraint, is depicted not as a cinematic demon but as a man deformed by solitude and fanatic grief. His entire universe collapses around the gravitational pull of his mother — the voice of repression, purity, and punishment. After her death, his world becomes a museum of denial. In this psychodrama, we see loneliness metastasize into delusion. The horror lies not in the grotesque acts that follow, but in the psychological process that makes them possible: the human desire to preserve what cannot be kept.
In The Power of Your Story, I often remind clients: the stories we refuse to update turn toxic. Ed Gein’s tragedy is precisely that — his life freezes in an outdated narrative. His mother’s story of sin and purity becomes his doctrine, unchallenged and unedited, until it devours all other meaning. Every human being risks the same: when your inner script no longer evolves but repeats, it builds a private world cut off from empathy.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story uses its visual grammar brilliantly. The barren fields, the snow stretching endlessly beyond the farmhouse, the muted color palette — all convey emotional desolation. The camera lingers not on gore but on emptiness. Each still frame feels like a page from a diary nobody dared read. That restraint prevents sensationalism. Instead, it forces the viewer to humanize even what terrifies. The true horror emerges not from Gein’s crimes, but from realizing how such darkness germinates inside recognizable human emotions: guilt, love, fear of abandonment.
The supporting characters — the sheriff investigating, the neighbors remembering — anchor the story in community rather than pathology. Through them, the series asks: what happens to a society that sees strangeness but decides to look away? It is our collective self-portrait: the village that senses something wrong but maintains decorum instead of curiosity. In that shared silence, monstrosity grows unchallenged.
The narrative structure is nonlinear, sliding between Gein’s confession and the gradual public discovery of his crimes. Yet what fascinates me most is that the show never gives us full closure. It withholds moral tidiness, reminding viewers that evil is not a climax but an ecosystem of neglect, repression, and distortion. Every scene whispers the same uncomfortable truth: we create our monsters when we refuse to listen to the wounded storyteller inside us.
Viewed through The Power of Your Story, Ed Gein becomes the archetype of the Shadow Keeper — the self that buries unwanted memories until they morph into horror. His story cautions that ignoring pain does not erase it; it transforms it into imagery no heart can bear. The journey of healing, both for him (too late) and for us as audience, is to reenter the forbidden chambers of our own narrative and bring in light.
The filmmakers wisely avoid turning Gein into myth. Instead, they place him within his social and historical context: 1950s rural America — a place of stoic masculinity, suppressed emotion, religious fear, and isolation. These cultural forces become co-authors in his madness. The viewer realizes that Gein’s crimes, while singular, sprout from collective soil — a society allergic to emotional honesty.
By the final episode, what remains is not fascination but reflection. We feel moved to reconsider what we label “monstrous.” The series reframes it: perhaps “monsters” are those whose stories go unheard so long that they lose language entirely. The challenge is not to excuse, but to understand the mechanics of disconnection.
As Peter de Kuster, I see Monster: The Ed Gein Story as a dark mirror to humanity’s most universal hunger — the need for belonging. Gein’s distortion of love becomes a fable of unintegrated grief. His crimes stand as the grotesque reflection of our collective failure to face mourning, shame, and loneliness directly. What happens when the storyteller has no listener? Madness.
This is what moves me most: the show’s moral intelligence lies in empathy without absolution. It neither glorifies nor demonizes, but holds space for complexity. That, ultimately, is real storytelling — not simplification but transformation.
Commentary from The Power of Your Story Perspective
- Repressed Stories Become Monsters
Every untold feeling demands expression. If not spoken, it acts out. Gein’s repressed grief became theater. In modern life, our “acting out” may be subtler — staying too long in wrong careers, relationships, or routines. The cure is narration: speak the truth you’ve silenced. - The Tyranny of the Mother Story
In The Power of Your Story, “the Mother Story” symbolizes inherited belief systems — what authority told you was good or bad. Gein’s tragedy is obedience to an obsolete story. Growth means rewriting ancestral scripts in your own vocabulary. - Isolation Distorts Perception
Without an audience of empathy, imagination feeds on itself. Every storyteller — every human being — needs witnesses. Without reflection, self-narration collapses into echo. - The Courage to Look at Shadow
Watching Monster is an act of shadow work. It asks: where do I hide my guilt, shame, or fear? To integrate the shadow is not to approve of it, but to reclaim creative energy wasted on repression. - Healing Through Listening
Transformation arises when we witness darkness without judgment. Listeners heal storytellers; storytellers heal listeners. The documentary’s highest moral act is attentive presence.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story thus becomes a parable for every person seeking authenticity. It reminds us that our salvation lies not in perfection but in awareness.
Five Great Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Own Story
- Which inherited “mother story” shapes my choices even when it no longer fits my values?
- Identifying outdated beliefs begins your liberation as storyteller.
- Where in my life have I built emotional isolation that keeps others from witnessing my truth?
- Isolation breeds distortion; community restores reality.
- What buried grief or loss still dictates my behavior today?
- To name grief is to free creativity trapped within sorrow.
- What part of myself am I most afraid to look at, and what power might it contain if integrated?
- Shadows often conceal your richest strength.
- How can I turn silence into dialogue — both with others and within my inner world?
- Dialogue is the opposite of madness; it is the return to meaning.
Story Coaching with Peter de Kuster
If Monster: The Ed Gein Story awakened in you the desire to face your inner shadows, let’s transform that insight into creative power. Through three online Story Coaching sessions, I help you identify the unspoken parts of your life narrative and rewrite them into a vision guided by awareness, compassion, and courage.
Investment: €495 (excluding VAT)
In these sessions we map your personal mythology — the beliefs that built your identity — and reauthor your story so that repression turns into freedom, silence into voice.
The purpose is not to escape your darkness, but to understand it as raw storytelling material for wisdom.
Your life is not a horror story. It is a human story waiting to be retold with empathy — by its rightful author: you.
The Power of Your Story 