REVIEW: Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024)

Television Reviews

I really liked Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story when it aired on Netflix in 2022. It was tense, well-acted, and shocking. I’ve heard of the Menendez brothers before, and at my job, we listened to a podcast about them, so I was instantly sold on season 2, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The Menendez trials were before my time, and I only became interested in things like this a year or two ago. But after listening to the testimony of their cousins and psychologists, I believe the allegations of abuse. It all seems so raw and real. So, my only concern with the series was how this would be portrayed, especially when the show is literally called Monsters. Then, Erik Menendez spoke out against the show through his wife, Tammi. You can see his full statement here. Anyway, I still wanted to see the show so I could make my own assessment, but this was concerning. I think the brothers should have served some time or been somehow reprimanded since they did kill people, specifically their parents, and we can’t condone that. But life in prison is just cruel after what they experienced, especially Erik. Let’s dive in and see how Monsters handles this delicate subject material.

***SPOILERS***

Monsters begins the Menendez brothers in the wake of their parents’ brutal murder. They attend funeral services, live off of their father’s lavish estate, and blame the crime on the Mafia. However, younger brother Erik can’t handle the weight of his actions and cracks, telling his therapist everything. This creates problems when Dr. Oziel calls Lyle and asks him to come down to the office for a chat. Lyle threatens Dr. Oziel and berates Erik for divulging their secrets. What ensues is a mixture of truth and fantasy, flashbacks, and courtroom drama. Monsters attempts to display multiple different perspectives on how the brothers killed their parents and why. In the end, they’re imprisoned and eventually separated into different prisons. They lose everything, even one another.

The acting in Monsters is next level. I think Cooper Koch (Erik), Nathan Lane (journalist Dominick Dunne), Javier Bardem (Jose Menendez), and Ari Graynor (Erik’s attorney, Leslie Abramson) will get awards buzz for this. Cooper Koch displays such a vulnerability and range of emotions in Monsters, particularly in episode 5, “The Hurt Man.” This episode is also remarkably well-directed. It’s essentially a half-hour-long tracking shot of Erik in jail talking to his lawyer. He details the worst aspects of the abuse he endured and how he felt, lending context to his heinous actions. The camera slowly–almost imperceptibly–zooms in on Cooper’s Erik, leaving Graynor’s Leslie Abramson behind. It’s haunting, deeply unsettling, and personal. I’m always impressed when they can make extended dialogue sequences this engaging, let alone a full episode. Cooper Koch steals the show, but I don’t want it to sound like he gives the only good performance. I love Nathan Lane, and this is my favorite of his performances that I’ve seen. Lane plays a grieving father who misdirects his pain towards anyone accused of a violent crime. His daughter didn’t get justice; her killer was allowed to roam free after choking her to death. But his mistake comes in equating the cases he follows with hers. Dominick and others mockingly deride the “abuse excuse,” assuming Leslie is lying and uses it for all her clients. Ari Graynor plays Abramson as Erik’s relentless guardian angel, determined to save a boy she believes has been wronged his entire life. Frequent Ryan Murphy collaborator Leslie Grossman plays Judalon Smyth, the infamous lover of Dr. Oziel. She is a one-woman sideshow, derailing the trial with talk of her affair with the doctor and performing sex acts for free therapy. Dallas Roberts plays Dr. Oziel, who is more interested in business than professional ethics in the series. Jose and Kitty Menendez are played by Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny, the latter another Murphy favorite. Bardem is always reliable, and he turns in a masterful performance here. Intimidating, commanding, and painfully charismatic, you can easily imagine how someone like Jose could have such a hold on his kids. I’m left wondering if Jose and Kitty are meant to be the “monsters,” but I think the show wants the audience to judge that.

And that’s where I take issue. This is real life; the story of the Menendez brothers really happened. No matter how you look at it or who you believe, a family was torn apart. That’s devastating no matter what happened or whose fault it was. But I don’t think it’s good for a TV show to portray it like this, like we don’t know what happened. I know some will argue that none of us were there in that room, and none of us knew Jose and Kitty in person. That’s all true, but I find it convenient that the phrase is “believe women” rather than “believe victims.” And in 1989, when the crime took place, it wasn’t cute to accuse people of rape like it is now. This didn’t happen every day. I don’t understand showing this story as a choose-your-own-adventure, multiple-choice affair. I don’t see Dr. Oziel or Dominick Dunne’s perspectives as equal to the brothers’. This leads to actual technical problems, too. For example, in the finale, “Hang Men,” we see the boys taken to different prisons in one final act of cruelty. This plays out perfectly in the music, performances, and filmmaking. The vans diverge, and the brothers are caught off guard, isolated from the thing they each loved most: each other. This is a perfect ending, and I can’t for the life of me understand why the show goes on for one more scene after this. It’s a scene showing something we can only speculate about: a conversation between the two boys on a fishing trip. It’s orchestrated to make them look like cold-blooded killers, and I can only imagine that’s why it is included at all. This is more of a nitpick, but I don’t love the show’s background music, namely the female vocals. They’re too heavy-handed with this, and it’s distracting. However, I loved the songs used, like “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House and various Milli Vanilli tracks. I don’t necessarily love these songs, but they are funny and/or used well.

Monsters is a mess. It’s brimming with brilliant performances, and episode 5 is worth seeing in itself. However, its narrative is noncommittal, almost like the show itself is a trial, and we are the jurors, left to decide for ourselves. But this isn’t just a show; this isn’t Rashomon. This really happened. It’s a tough call, but while I got some enjoyment out of the show, I wouldn’t recommend it for moral reasons and authenticity. The show really falls apart in the second half or so after the amazing “The Hurt Man.” I think this should have been a season of American Crime Story and more fact-driven; O.J. Simpson even briefly appears in The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story!

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