Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story Review: Ryan Murphy’s Gilded Age Nightmare

Few nursery rhymes in American folklore carry the chilling resonance of the playground chant that echoed through schoolyards for over a century:

“Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”

Historically inaccurate though those numbers may be—autopsy records revealed Andrew Borden sustained eleven strikes and Abby Borden nineteen—the cultural imprint of the August 4, 1892 double homicide in Fall River, Massachusetts remains indelible. More than 130 years after the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden were discovered drenched in blood inside their Second Street home, the case continues to sit at the crossroads of true crime obsession, feminist theory, and Victorian gothic horror.

It was only a matter of time before television’s undisputed maestro of macabre sensationalism, Ryan Murphy, turned his sights toward Fall River. Following the monumental global success of Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Netflix’s flagship true-crime anthology returns with Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.

Upon its worldwide release, the series predictably rocketed to the summit of the Netflix Top 10 charts across dozens of countries. But behind the algorithmic dominance lies a more complex question: does Ryan Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan’s dramatization bring fresh, illuminating perspective to the quintessential Gilded Age patricide, or does it merely dress an ancient tragedy in trademark high-gloss camp and graphic gore?

In this exhaustive 2,500+ word review, we deconstruct Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, inspecting its historical fidelity, analyzing its visual grammar, evaluating the ensemble cast, and interrogating how Murphy handles the murky boundaries between documented court fact and lurid psychological conjecture.

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1. Historical Context: The Pressure Cooker of 92 Second Street

To understand why The Lizzie Borden Story functions so effectively as psychological horror, one must first understand the claustrophobic reality of the Borden household prior to the morning of August 4, 1892.

Fall River in the late 19th century was a booming textile empire, divided sharply along lines of old Puritan wealth and newly arrived immigrant labor. Andrew Borden was among the city’s wealthiest citizens, possessing extensive commercial real estate holdings, banks, and textile mill stock. His net worth at the time of his death was estimated at roughly $300,000—equivalent to tens of millions of dollars today.

Yet Andrew was notoriously miserly. Despite his immense fortune, he refused to move his family to “The Hill,” the affluent neighborhood where Fall River’s elite built sprawling Victorian estates equipped with indoor plumbing and electric lighting. Instead, he forced his family to remain in a cramped, unpretentious house at 92 Second Street, in an industrializing commercial district near the mills.

The house had no indoor plumbing; waste was carried out in slop pails. It had no gas illumination until late in Andrew’s life, relying instead on kerosene lamps. More claustrophobically, the second-floor layout was designed with interlocking rooms that lacked hallways, forcing inhabitants to pass directly through each other’s private bedchambers unless doors were deliberately kept locked.

The psychological environment was a toxic pressure cooker:

• The Sullen Daughters: Lizzie (32) and her older sister Emma (41) were unmarried Victorian spinsters entirely dependent on their father’s financial whims for their allowance, clothing, and social standing.
• The Estranged Stepmother: Abby Durfee Gray Borden had married Andrew decades earlier, but the daughters never accepted her, coldly referring to her as “Mrs. Borden” rather than “Mother.”
• Property Disputes: Tensions exploded in the months prior to the murders when Andrew quietly transferred real estate to Abby’s family, prompting fierce arguments from Lizzie and Emma regarding their future inheritance.
• The Dead Pigeons: In a chilling historical detail the series captures with brutal visual clarity, Andrew Borden became irritated by pigeons roosting in his barn and personally beheaded them with an axe in front of Lizzie, who had kept them as pets.

The series dedicates significant runtime in its opening episodes to establishing this domestic prison. Murphy understands that before the carnage can shock the audience, the suffocation must be felt. Every ticking grandfather clock, every heavy velvet curtain shutting out daylight, and every strained, silent meal at the Borden dining table builds an inescapable sense of impending explosion.

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2. The Murders and the Crime Scene: Historical Fact vs. Artistic License

On the morning of August 4, 1892, between 9:00 AM and 11:15 AM, the routine of Second Street was shattered forever.

The series depicts the double homicide with the unflinching, visceral brutality that has become the hallmark of the Monster franchise. Where many historical dramas choose to stage the killings through tasteful shadows or off-camera sound effects, Murphy and his directorial team stage them with unrelenting, terrifying proximity.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                        CHRONOLOGY OF AUGUST 4, 1892                    │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 09:00 AM - Andrew Borden leaves home for morning banking business.     │
│ 09:30 AM - Abby Borden murdered in upstairs guest bedroom (19 blows).  │
│ 10:45 AM - Andrew Borden returns home; maid lets him inside.           │
│ 11:00 AM - Andrew lies down on sitting room sofa for a morning nap.    │
│ 11:10 AM - Andrew Borden murdered while sleeping on sofa (11 blows).   │
│ 11:15 AM - Lizzie calls maid Bridget Sullivan: "Someone killed Father!"│
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The physical reality of the crime scene baffled investigators in 1892, and the series leans heavily into these unsolved forensic contradictions:

1. The Absence of Blood: When neighbor Adelaide Churchill and Dr. Seabury Bowen arrived at the scene minutes after Lizzie’s cries, Lizzie Borden was impeccably dressed in a clean morning dress, her hair pinned neatly, without a single visible drop of blood on her face, hands, or skirts. Given the catastrophic arterial spray that would have resulted from crushing two human skulls with a hatchet, how could the killer have escaped spotless?
2. The Naked Murder Theory: Murphy dramatizes one of the most famous hypotheses advanced by later true-crime historians: that Lizzie may have stripped completely naked before committing the murders, subsequently washing herself with basin water before raising the alarm. The sequence is filmed with cold, surgical intensity, emphasizing the sheer psychopathic detachment required to execute such a premeditated act.
3. The Burnt Dress: Days after the murder, while under police surveillance, Lizzie was observed burning a blue dress in the kitchen stove, claiming she had accidentally stained it with brown paint. The series stages this moment as a pivotal turning point in the district attorney’s decision to formally indict her.

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3. Ryan Murphy’s Aesthetic: High-Gloss Gothic Camp vs. True-Crime Dread

To review a Ryan Murphy television project is to engage with a distinct cinematic language. Throughout his career—spanning American Horror Story, Feud, Pose, and Nip/Tuck—Murphy has operated as a maximalist. He rarely whispers when he can scream; he never employs a neutral palette when an oversaturated tone is available.

In The Lizzie Borden Story, Murphy’s stylistic instincts both elevate and occasionally undermine the narrative:

The Visual Grammar: Suffocating Gilded Age Grandeur

Cinematographer Nelson Cragg frames Fall River not as a quaint New England town, but as an oppressive gothic mausoleum. The camera moves with creeping, predatory deliberation down dark hallways, lingering on the heavy woodwork, damask wallpapers, and silver tableware.

The color grade shifts dramatically across settings:

• The Borden Household: Muted sepia, sickly ochres, and shadow-drenched amber lamps, creating a visual sense of rot beneath Victorian decorum.
• The Courtroom: Harsh, cool, over-exposed lighting that strips away domestic mystery and exposes the characters to the gaze of an all-male jury and sensationalist press.
• Flashbacks and Fantasies: High-contrast, hyper-vibrant saturation where Lizzie’s internal emotional desires and subconscious rage spill into feverish daylight.

The Problem of Camp

Where the series falters is Murphy’s inability to resist camp melodrama. At several points during the mid-season episodes, the show pivots abruptly from serious historical character study into theatrical excess. Scenes featuring sensationalist newspaper editors or eccentric town gossips are directed with a broad, satirical tone that feels borrowed from American Horror Story: Coven rather than a serious true-crime dramatization.

When a scene demands quiet, understated grief, Murphy occasionally dials up operatic strings, dramatic slow-motion close-ups, and theatrical line readings. For audiences looking for a somber, documentary-style reconstruction, this stylistic intrusion can feel jarring. However, for those tuned to Murphy’s brand of campy grand-guignol spectacle, it provides undeniably kinetic, bingeable television.

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4. Cast Performances: Power Dynamics in the Victorian Parlor

The true anchor of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is its central acting ensemble, who manage to breathe complex human breath into figures long ossified by historical caricature.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                         CORE ENSEMBLE DYNAMICS                         │
│                                                                        │
│   ┌──────────────────┐                     ┌──────────────────┐        │
│   │  LIZZIE BORDEN   │◀────resentment─────▶│   ABBY BORDEN    │        │
│   │ (Repression/Rage)│                     │(Alienated Stepmom│        │
│   └────────┬─────────┘                     └────────┬─────────┘        │
│            │                                        │                  │
│       control/fear                             marital duty            │
│            ▼                                        ▼                  │
│   ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐        │
│   │                      ANDREW BORDEN                        │        │
│   │            (Miserly Patriarch / Textile Wealth)           │        │
│   └─────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┘        │
│                             │                                          │
│                    conflicted allegiance                               │
│                             ▼                                          │
│   ┌──────────────────┐                     ┌──────────────────┐        │
│   │   EMMA BORDEN    │                     │ BRIDGET SULLIVAN │        │
│   │ (Older Protector)│                     │  (Irish Servant) │        │
│   └──────────────────┘                     └──────────────────┘        │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The Central Performance: Lizzie Borden

The actress tasked with portraying Lizzie Borden faces an almost impossible challenge: how do you portray a historical figure who was either a cold-blooded patricidal butcher or an unjustly accused, deeply traumatized young woman?

The performance navigates this razor-thin tightrope brilliantly. Rather than picking a single, tidy psychological diagnosis, the portrayal leans into Lizzie’s profound duality. In one scene, she is the fragile, demure Sunday school teacher reciting Bible verses and weeping softly in front of the local pastor; in the next, her eyes glaze over with a terrifying, vacant calm as she coolly maneuvers around her father’s inquiries regarding missing household items. The performance resists making Lizzie easily sympathetic, yet makes her stifling imprisonment so visceral that her desperate impulses become understandable, if not forgivable.

Andrew Borden: The Monster at the Head of the Table

The portrayal of Andrew Borden avoids the trap of cartoonish villainy. He is not a mustache-twirling monster who beats his daughters; he is something far more common in the Victorian era: a cold, dogmatic patriarch who views his wealth as an extension of his moral virtue and his family members as domestic chattels. His cruelty is expressed through tight-lipped financial control, quiet humiliations, and an unbending refusal to grant his adult daughters any personal agency or financial dignity.

Emma Borden: The Silent Complicity of the Older Sister

Emma Borden, who was out of town in Fairhaven visiting friends on the morning of the murders, is portrayed with heartbreaking weariness. As the older sister who promised their dying biological mother that she would protect little Lizzie, Emma carries an unspoken burden of guilt. The quiet exchanges between Emma and Lizzie in the aftermath of the trial showcase some of the finest, most nuanced writing in the entire season.

Bridget Sullivan: The Helpless Witness

The Borden family’s Irish maid, Bridget Sullivan (whom the sisters casually and dismissively addressed as “Maggie”), serves as the audience surrogate. Trapped on the bottom rung of the Victorian class hierarchy, Bridget spends her days scrubbing windows in 90-degree summer heat while suffering from vomiting spells caused by spoiled mutton Andrew insisted on eating. Her courtroom testimony and palpable terror in the days following the murder ground the tragedy in the lived reality of an immigrant worker with everything to lose.

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5. Thematic Depth: Gender, Class, and Victorian Hypocrisy

Beyond its sensational violence and true-crime thrills, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story succeeds because it engages seriously with the structural hypocrisies of late-19th-century American society.

Why Lizzie Was Acquitted: The Shield of Victorian Womanhood

In June 1893, Lizzie Borden was tried for double murder in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence—the lack of an outside intruder, the inconsistent alibis, the attempted purchase of prussic acid (cyanide) the day before the murders, and the burned dress—the all-male jury deliberated for barely ninety minutes before returning a verdict of Not Guilty.

The series dissects the sociopolitical mechanisms that made her conviction impossible:

1. The Cult of True Womanhood: The Victorian public held that Christian, upper-middle-class women were inherently gentle, moral, and physically incapable of savagery. To find Lizzie Borden guilty would be to admit that a woman of “good breeding” could swing a hatchet into her father’s brain, a revelation that threatened the very fabric of the patriarchal social order.
2. Class Privilege: Andrew Borden’s money, the very thing Lizzie may have killed to obtain, bought the finest legal defense team in Massachusetts, headed by former Governor George Robinson. Robinson successfully barred Lizzie’s contradictory inquest testimony from being admitted as evidence, outmaneuvering the prosecution at every turn.
3. The All-Male Jury: In 1893, women were barred from serving on juries or voting. Lizzie’s defense team played masterfully to the chivalric instincts of twelve middle-aged men, repeatedly arguing that no man could look upon a respectable Christian maiden and sentence her to hang by the neck.

Murphy highlights this supreme irony: the very patriarchal Victorian gender norms that imprisoned Lizzie inside 92 Second Street were ultimately the exact armor that saved her from the gallows.

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6. Narrative Architecture: How the Season Unfolds

The series organizes its narrative into a deliberate three-act trajectory across its episode run:

Narrative Phase	Episode Focus	Core Dramatic Engine	Tone & Style
Act I: The Cage	Episodes 1–3	The suffocating atmosphere of 92 Second Street, the heatwave of August 1892, escalating property fights, the slaughter of Lizzie’s pet pigeons.	Slow-burn psychological dread, claustrophobic domestic tension.
Act II: The Blood	Episodes 4–6	The murders of Abby and Andrew Borden, botched police investigations, contradictory coroner inquests, Lizzie’s arrest and imprisonment.	Visceral horror, forensic mystery, media sensationalism.
Act III: The Circus	Episodes 7–8	The June 1893 New Bedford trial, courtroom theatrics, jury manipulation, the dramatic acquittal.	Legal procedural, social commentary, historical courtroom drama.
Epilogue: Maplecroft	Episodes 9–10	Post-acquittal life, the purchase of the Maplecroft mansion, social ostracization, the mysterious falling out and estrangement between Lizzie and Emma.	Melancholic gothic character study, tragic isolation.

The decision to dedicate the final two episodes to the aftermath of the trial is one of the season’s strongest narrative choices. Most film and television adaptations of the Borden case end on the courthouse steps with Lizzie’s triumphant acquittal.

Murphy, however, presses forward into the long winter of her life. After inheriting her father’s millions, Lizzie purchased “Maplecroft,” a luxurious, modern Victorian mansion on The Hill with indoor plumbing, steam heat, and landscaped gardens.

Yet the victory proved hollow. The elite society of Fall River completely ostracized her. Pews emptied when she entered church; shopkeepers turned their backs; neighborhood children threw eggs at her doors and chanted the infamous axe rhyme outside her gates. The tragic disintegration of her relationship with her sister Emma, who abruptly packed her bags in 1905 and never spoke to Lizzie again for the remaining twenty-two years of their lives, concludes the series on a haunting note of profound spiritual emptiness.

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7. Comparative Analysis: How It Ranks in the Monster Pantheon

Comparative Metric	Monster: Lizzie Borden (2026)	Dahmer (Season 1)	Menendez Brothers (Season 2)
Setting & Period	1890s Gilded Age Fall River	1970s–1990s Urban Milwaukee	1980s–1990s Beverly Hills Wealth
Core Theme	Victorian domestic repression & gender hypocrisy	Systemic police racism, institutional failure, isolation	Wealth, generational sexual abuse, media spectacle
Gore & Violence	High; visceral, blunt-force hatchet trauma	Extremely high; body horror, necrophilia, cannibalism	Moderate; visceral shotgun violence in early episodes
Camp Factor	Moderate; periods of melodrama mixed with historical dread	Low; relentlessly grim, somber, and documentary-like	High; theatrical courtroom scenes and 90s pop excess
Historical Debate	Unsolved Mystery / Acquittal (Subject to endless interpretation)	Documented confession and undisputed physical evidence	Undisputed killings with contested claims of abuse
Emotional Anchor	The tragic estrangement of the Borden sisters	The devastating grief of the victims’ families	The psychological trauma of Lyle and Erik Menendez

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8. Strengths & Creative Weaknesses

Strengths

• Impeccable Production Design: The recreation of 1892 Fall River—from the cramped, kerosene-lit wallpaper of 92 Second Street to the opulent horse-drawn carriages and Victorian courtrooms—is museum-grade in its tactile authenticity.
• Nuanced Exploration of Gender Politics: The series avoids simplistic girl-boss revisionism, instead showing how Victorian gender ideology both suffocated women and blinded men to their capacity for violence.
• Stellar Ensemble Acting: The central performances deliver complex, deeply layered portrayals that prevent the characters from devolving into two-dimensional caricatures.
• Haunting Epilogue: Dedicating multiple episodes to the post-trial life at Maplecroft reveals the true, lasting price of Lizzie’s freedom.

Weaknesses

• Pacing Slump in the Middle: The transition between the inquest and the courtroom trial lags across episodes 5 and 6, repeating several narrative beats regarding town gossip and police incompetence.
• Occasional Camp Intrusion: Ryan Murphy’s trademark melodrama and operatic flourishes occasionally clash with the grounded horror of the historical crime.
• Speculative Inventions: While the series stays close to documented court records, several private bedroom interactions and romantic subplots are entirely speculative, muddying historical waters for casual viewers.

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9. Final Verdict & Rating

Final Score: 8.2 / 10

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is an undeniably gripping, gorgeously mounted, and profoundly unsettling examination of America’s original true-crime sensation.

By grounding the infamous axe murders in the suffocating psychological, economic, and patriarchal domestic reality of 1890s Fall River, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan have crafted one of the most mature and compelling installments of the Monster franchise to date. While it occasionally indulges in Murphy’s signature penchant for theatrical excess, the stellar cast performances, immaculate Gilded Age production design, and thoughtful examination of Victorian hypocrisy make it essential viewing for true crime aficionados and prestige television enthusiasts alike.

Score Breakdown

• Cast & Performances: 9.0 / 10
• Production Design & Atmosphere: 9.2 / 10
• Pacing & Screenplay: 7.5 / 10
• Historical Faithfulness: 7.8 / 10
• Overall Rating: 8.2 / 10