‘Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy’ and ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ are true crime polar opposites

Each time a TV present dramatizes a grisly true crime story, it faces a dilemma. Is it potential to retell a tragedy with out exploiting the victims and their households? Not solely that, however are you able to recreate these deaths with out sensationalizing, and even glorifying, the killer accountable?

These questions have created a style that is at battle with itself, one which’s conscious of each its moral dubiousness and the truth that viewers will gobble it as much as sate their true crime fascination. This October has supplied up two reveals that take extraordinarily totally different approaches to fixing this quandary: Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story and Peacock’s Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy.

The previous continues the method that Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan established in different installments of their Monster anthology collection: a mixture of salacious reenactments and ham-fisted commentary about America’s fascination with true crime. The latter, although, takes a way more cautious tack to the query of true crime media as inherently exploitative, forgoing onscreen murders completely in favor of a victim-centric strategy.

Satan in Disguise and The Ed Gein Story differ in terms of onscreen violence.

The Ed Gein Story gives precisely what viewers have come to anticipate from a Murphy and Brennan true crime undertaking, which is to say that it doesn’t shrink back from onscreen violence. Bloody chainsaw massacres and hammer torture are among the many atrocities on show, however they’re removed from the one ones. The Ed Gein Story additionally provides extra unsavory particulars, together with a scene of Gein (Charlie Hunnam) participating in necrophilia. (Though there was real-life hypothesis that Gein was a necrophiliac, Gein himself denied these expenses.) The result’s a parade of graphic atrocities conjured up for affordable shock worth, upsetting and exhausting in equal measure.

Whereas the violence in The Ed Gein Story is as in-your-face as might be, Satan in Disguise avoids exhibiting any of Gacy’s murders within the first place. Gacy (Michael Chernus) will sometimes describe his actions, however the precise pictures of his crimes loom offscreen. The impact is twofold: On the one hand, the present is respecting Gacy’s victims by not recreating their deaths. On the opposite, the implied violence leaves audiences to think about what befell Gacy’s victims, and the impact is extra chilling than any onscreen rehashing of victims’ trauma.

As a substitute of showcasing Gacy’s murders, Satan in Disguise turns the highlight on his victims, hoping to flesh out data of their lives past simply their deaths. Most episodes are named after these younger males and have flashbacks main as much as their assembly with Gacy. Episode 2, “Johnny,” facilities on John Szyc (Levi Shelton), a homosexual excessive schooler making an attempt to determine tips on how to come out to his dad and mom. Episode 5, “Billy and Dale,” highlights two Chicago intercourse employees (Brayden Raqueño and Max Mattern).

There are a number of tales on show, however for the police investigating these lacking individuals instances, they paint each sufferer with the identical brush: “troubled.” As a result of their queerness, their jobs as intercourse employees, or their prior run-ins with regulation enforcement, folks like John, Billy, and Dale aren’t priorities for police, permitting Gacy to get away with homicide for years. Satan in Disguise showcases these prejudices with the identical unflinching emphasis that different true crime reveals might place on homicide scenes.

It is value noting that the primary installment of Monster, Dahmer, tried a considerably comparable strategy to Satan in Disguise. It highlighted police prejudice towards Dahmer’s (Evan Peters) victims, and Netflix even claimed the collection would “give the victims a voice.” But the present didn’t seek the advice of victims’ households at any level earlier than, throughout, or after manufacturing, going as far as to recreate court docket scenes portraying still-living relations of Dahmer’s victims with out even the courtesy of a heads-up. The web backlash was extreme.

Satan in Disguise and The Ed Gein Story have vastly totally different opinions of their audiences.

Charlie Hunnam in “Monster: The Ed Gein Story.”
Credit score: Netflix

As Satan in Disguise hones in on police prejudice, The Ed Gein Story clumsily tries to make a degree of its personal: that the folks watching are the actual monsters.

The collection examines not simply Gein’s crimes, but in addition how they impressed legendary movies like Psycho, The Texas Chain Noticed Bloodbath, and The Silence of the Lambs. In doing this, The Ed Gein Story hopes to interrogate American audiences’ want for fictional violence, at the same time as they flip away from real-life atrocities.

“You are the one who cannot look away,” Gein tells viewers in a fourth-wall break, implicating us in his acts.

But The Ed Gein Story‘s indictment of its personal viewers falls flat because the present fails to contemplate its personal place within the true crime ecosystem. It is completely content material to attract connections between Gein and different items of media — together with a wildly offensive parallel between Gein and Psycho actor Anthony Perkins (Joey Pollari) — however by no means appears inward at the way it, too, is sensationalizing violence for viewers consumption. “How dare you retain watching,” The Ed Gein Story scolds viewers, all whereas Murphy and Brennan put together to churn out a fourth season of Monster. It is eight episodes of sanctimony with out self-awareness.

Whereas The Ed Gein Story loathes its audiences for watching its nastiness (even because it serves up its gore on a human pores and skin platter), Satan in Disguise appeals to viewers compassion. The present is aware of that the Gacy title will inevitably draw viewers, which is why it opts to shed new gentle on Gacy’s victims and their households, versus delivering bloody shocks. Every episode ends with a hyperlink to an internet site that delves into how the problems that made Gacy’s victims susceptible persist immediately, and what the viewer can do to take motion. The location, which is in partnership with GLAAD, Covenant Home, the Nationwide Sexual Violence Useful resource Heart, and Equimundo, additionally gives assets just like the Trevor Mission Disaster Hotline and an anti-LGBTQ+ invoice tracker.

Satan in Disguise is not at all an ideal true crime drama. Sometimes, it falls into the Monster entice of sensationalizing Gacy’s story, reminiscent of a macabre sequence that juxtaposes him choosing up younger males with him donning his clown make-up. Nonetheless, that is the one time Satan in Disguise truly reveals any of Gacy’s clowning, whereas you already know a present like Monster would have leaned far tougher into the killer clown angle.

That stage of extra has outlined true crime dramatizations for years now, however Satan in Disguise suggests a special and much-needed new route ahead for the style: restraint.

Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy is now streaming on Peacock.