Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story Opens Big — But Can It Beat the Critics?

Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology has done it again. “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story,” the fourth season of Netflix’s controversial-yet-unstoppable franchise, debuted at #1 on the Global Top 10 with 12.1 million views in its opening week, landing in the Top 10 across 89 countries.’

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story- A Familiar Pattern: Big Numbers, Rough Reviews

If you’ve followed “Monster” before, you know the drill by now — massive audience turnout paired with lukewarm critical reception. This season currently sits at 42% with critics and 57% with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, continuing a trend that’s defined the franchise since “DAHMER” first launched in 2022. Critics have repeatedly pushed back on the show’s tone and the ethics of dramatizing real tragedies, yet subscribers keep tuning in anyway.

How It Stacks Up Against Previous Seasons

The Lizzie Borden opener lands right in line with the franchise’s recent chapters — just slightly behind “The Ed Gein Story” and “The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” and well behind the original “DAHMER,” which benefited from a Wednesday release rather than a Thursday one.

Since the franchise began, all four “Monster” installments have hit #1 on Netflix’s Global chart, and the series has racked up nearly 170 million cumulative views since 2023.

The Rest of the Week’s Top 10

Lizzie Borden wasn’t the only strong performer. “Crew Girl” debuted right behind it at #2, while Guy Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen” saw its Season 2 return pull the original season back into the Top 5 alongside it. WWE Raw and “Gabby’s Dollhouse” rounded out a genuinely varied chart for the week.

True crime as entertainment isn’t new — it taps into a much older fascination with real historical cases, including the actual 1892 Lizzie Borden murders that inspired this dramatization, a case that has puzzled historians and true-crime fans for well over a century.

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