The Lizzie Borden Story: A jaw-dropping, gory, history-defying season
Matthew Creith calls the season a frequently entertaining but chaotic reimagining that wanders far from the documented case.
He singles out Rebecca Hall, who throws herself into the heightened dialogue as a nasty Abby Borden, a Monster.
Vicky Krieps delivers a quietly layered performance as Bridget, proving more compelling than the title character.
Sarah Paulson’s brief turn as Aileen Wuornos also wins him over.
Where he struggles is with Ella Beatty’s Lizzie, whom he finds too opaque to get a grip on, and with a Wuornos crossover that feels bolted on. With little interest in solving the mystery or in subtlety, he concludes, the show becomes a loose collage of revenge ideas that never fully holds together. Matthew Creith, TheWrap
Emma Fraser believes the season has worthwhile messages about how society views women who kill.
She cites Wuornos’s sentencing versus Borden’s acquittal, and the late trial and Lizzie finale as its strongest Monster stretch.
Elsewhere, she feels the constant blood and bodily fluids numb rather than shock, and that the leaps linking Borden to Wuornos and to Elizabeth Báthory stretch history too far. A late detour into the suffrage movement also struck her as abrupt. Emma Fraser, The Daily Beast
Alex Maidy ranks it as the weakest chapter of the anthology so far, even while applauding the cast. He sees Beatty as convincing in a role that hides calculation behind youthful naivety, calls Hall a standout as the cruel stepmother, and considers Paulson’s transformation into Wuornos worthy of awards attention. Krieps, the costumes and the practical gore effects impress him too.
His complaints center on the storytelling. With so many invented details, it plays less like true crime and more like a season of American Horror Story, and the Lizzie and Bridget romance crowds out the real theories about the case. Across eight episodes, he finds the pace sluggish and padded. Alex Maidy, JoBlo
Valerie Anne finds much to like in the bond between Lizzie and Bridget, supplying Monster tension and tender moments.
She is warmer on Beatty than some colleagues.
She credits her with moving smoothly between Lizzie’s flighty public face and her darker private self.
She enjoys Hall and Krieps as well.
Even so, she can’t recommend it. Juggling three separate killers overloads the story, the men are drawn as cartoon villains, and repeated sexual violence and gross-out moments feel gratuitous. She also questions the show’s feminist branding and thinks eight episodes is at least two too many. Valerie Anne, Autostraddle
The consensus: Critics agree the ensemble is the main draw, especially Rebecca Hall, Vicky Krieps and Sarah Paulson, though they split on whether Ella Beatty’s Lizzie is magnetic or a blank. Nearly everyone finds the season overstuffed, gory and loose with history, making it a watch mainly for fans of Ryan Murphy’s heightened style rather than true-crime purists.
