The rhyme is back, the blood is flowing and Lizzie Borden is ready for her Monster close-up. Netflix has released the first teaser for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, offering up a fast, suitably gnarly glimpse at Ella Beatty as the woman at the centre of one of America’s most infamous unsolved murder cases. Watch the teaser above.
“Lizzie Borden took an axe…” The macabre rhyme that has followed the case for generations provides an appropriately sinister backdrop as the footage races through blood, screaming, family tension and Beatty looking increasingly less like someone willing to quietly endure life inside the Borden household.
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It’s only a teaser, so Netflix isn’t handing over much in the way of plot. What it does provide is tone, and plenty of it. The gloomy period setting gives way to flashes of violence and increasingly feverish imagery. As expected, the latest Monster chapter doesn’t appear to be approaching the notorious case with much in the way of restraint.
That tracks with the first images and details released earlier this month, which introduced Beatty’s blood-splattered Lizzie and pointed towards a story shaped by repression, desire and rage.
The Case Behind the New Season
Lizzie Borden was accused of killing her father, Andrew Borden, and stepmother, Abby Borden, with an axe at their Fall River, Massachusetts home in 1892. She was acquitted the following year, nobody else was ever charged and the murders remain officially unsolved.
Rather than presenting the case simply as a period whodunnit, creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan are using their version to dig into the circumstances surrounding Lizzie and the mythology that grew around her.
Netflix’s setup finds Lizzie as the repressed daughter of a wealthy New England family. Alongside the household’s rebellious maid, Bridget Sullivan, she is trapped in a home built on humiliation and cruelty, with the pair escaping into fantasies involving sex, power and revenge before the infamous murders change everything.
It also marks the anthology’s first season centred on a woman, following instalments focused on Jeffrey Dahmer, Erik and Lyle Menendez, and Ed Gein.
Who Stars in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story?
Beatty leads the cast as Lizzie, with Vicky Krieps playing Bridget Sullivan.
Charlie Hunnam returns to the anthology as Lizzie’s father, Andrew, after previously playing the title killer in Monster: The Ed Gein Story. This time, he’s very much on the other side of the axe.
Rebecca Hall plays Lizzie’s stepmother, Abby, while Billie Lourd stars as older sister Emma Borden and Jessica Barden plays actor Nance O’Neil.
Release Date
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story consists of eight episodes and premieres September 17 on Netflix.
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