On Aug. 20, 1989, Lyle and Erik Menendez brutally murdered their parents, firing so many shots into them—to the point that Lyle returned to his car to reload his weapon—that their bodies were more or less mutilated.
That crime is at the center of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, the second installment in Ryan Murphy’s Netflix anthology series (following Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), and so too are competing theories about why they did the heinous deed. Lyle and Erik claimed they had acted in response to lifelong sexual abuse at the hands of their father, as well as a fear of imminent death. Prosecutors, meanwhile, argued that their motivation was simple greed, as the boys coveted the enormous inheritance their father was set to deny them.
Murphy’s nine-episode show, though, posits an even juicier explanation: The boys wanted to slay their parents to keep secret the fact that they were engaged in an incestuous sexual relationship with each other.
Frequently scored to the sounds of Milli Vanilli, Lyle’s (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) favorite band, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (out now) is trademark Murphy, at once in-depth and superficial, incisive and outlandish. It’s also, predictably, flashy, highlighted by a fifth episode that’s comprised of a single, unbroken 33-minute take—the camera zooming ever-so-slowly into close-up—in which Erik (Cooper Koch) recounts, in explicit detail, the torment inflicted upon him by his dad José (Javier Bardem) and ignored by his mother Kitty (Chloë Sevigny).
However, lest that make it sound like the show is just a sympathetic portrait of its subjects, this latest ripped-from-the-headlines affair—Murphy’s second this month, alongside American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez—seesaws wildly between condemnation and commiseration, spreading its censure about before finally arriving at the same conclusion the siblings’ second criminal trial jury did: They were as guilty as sin.
No matter its competing perspectives, a few things are consistent throughout Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. José was a wealthy entertainment industry businessman who was demanding, if not scarily domineering, and his marriage to Kitty had been somewhat rocky due to an extramarital affair on his part. Lyle and Erik were upper-crust kids who wore their arrogant entitlement like a badge. And in the aftermath of their mother and father’s assassinations, the brothers forwarded wild speculation (perhaps the mafia murdered their parents!) and went on a spending spree of clothes, Rolex watches, cars, and more to the tune of a staggering $700,000.
Additionally not in dispute is that they were pinned for the executions when Erik—who’d already confessed to his friend Craig (Charlie Hall), who was unable to elicit a confession on wiretap—spilled the beans to his therapist Dr. Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts), all of which plays out in absorbing fashion in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
Erik does this because he’s gripped by suicidal thoughts brought about by guilt, and the series suggests that Oziel stayed mum about this revelation less because of doctor-patient confidentiality (as he said to Lyle and Erik) than because he saw them as potential investors in his business. Any such dealings, however, are ruined when Oziel tells everything to his mistress Judalon Smyth (Leslie Grossman), who—ostensibly out of anger at her lover, who won’t leave his wife—reports it to the police.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’s first few episodes cast Lyle and Erik as unrepentant sociopaths, detailing their ugly conduct with scathing disgust. Yet that changes once they’re behind bars and hire lawyer Leslie Abramson (Ari Graynor), at which point they suddenly have a new story: José had for years abused first Lyle and then Erik, and Lyle had similarly violated Erik in some twisted expression of anger and confusion.
This defense earns them the vitriol of reporter Dominick Dunne (Nathan Lane), who pops up now and again at court and in living rooms to slam the boys and their “abuse excuse,” which was the exact tactic that previously earned the killer of his daughter, Poltergeist actress Dominique, a mere slap on the wrist. Lane is a mouthpiece for anti-Menendez sentiment during the show’s middle passages, counteracting the otherwise detailed and sorrowful dramatization of Lyle and Erik’s mistreatment, and the actor bites into his role with the same gusto exhibited by Graynor as the objection-happy Abramson.
It’s Dunne who raises the idea that Lyle and Erik committed parricide not in response to trauma but because they were terrified that José might learn that they were lovers. Having already implied this in a shot of them reveling face-to-face at a party, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story depicts it outright in a quick scene in which Kitty accidentally walks in on them together in the shower, lasciviously soaping each other up.
Such sensationalism is par for Murphy’s course, and extends to a brief chat between Erik and O.J. Simpson, who appears in the cell next door to hear the Menendez kid’s helpful advice to take a plea deal. Moreover, for long stretches, it presents material about José and Kitty that it imagines out of whole cloth or gets from Lyle and Erik—the least reliable narrators on the planet when it comes to their own tale.
Aside from a single episode that focuses on José and Kitty, Bardem and Sevigny act like cartoonish ghouls or innocent victims, he scowling and raging with amusing ferocity, and she callously dismissing her children’s accusations and downing wine whenever possible—including the second she awakens from a seizure. Whether they’re portraying them as cold-blooded killers or damaged souls, Chavez and, especially, Koch are compelling as the notorious brothers. Alongside snappy and attention-grabbing direction by Carl Franklin, Paris Barclay, and Michael Uppendahl, their performances guarantee that Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is never boring and, at least occasionally, thought-provoking.
Nonetheless, Murphy plays all sides not because he believes every one of his suppositions but because he’s interested in drumming up intrigue and suspense, and the proceedings are ultimately more successful at holding one’s attention than providing novel insights. Unsurprisingly, then, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story ends right where it begins—with the unavoidable reality that Lyle and Erik, currently serving life sentences without the possibility for parole, are right where they belong.
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