"Monsters, devils - this spooky season, TV is less focused on supernatural miscreants than using them as metaphors for real-life horrors. Netflix and Peacock each released lightly fictionalized, eight-episode examinations of infamous American serial killers this October. One of these shows presenting its victims as people with full lives, not just corpses hidden in their killer's home. And one of these shows is Monster."
"Devil in Disguise, on the other hand, centers its dead from the jump. Creator and showrunner Patrick Macmanus opens with the 1978 abduction of Robert Piest, whose well-to-do family triggers a police investigation that uncovers multiple bodies under John Wayne Gacy's (Michael Chernus) floorboards. The series jumps back and forth between the ensuing investigation and snapshots of Gacy's victims to illustrate how police bias allowed his predation to continue and later, how the media sensationalized his crimes."
"It is! Mostly because it spends more time showing how Gacy's victims lived rather than how they died. Each episode is named after them ("Samuel and Randy," "Billy and Dale") and lingers on their circumstances before they met Gacy. Some, like Johnny Szyc, were trying to figure out how to come out to their parents. Others, like John Butkovich, tried to make a decent living working"
Two recent eight-episode series reinterpret notorious American serial killers with contrasting approaches. Monster: The Ed Gein Story emphasizes graphic violence and frames victims as material for the killer's artistic fantasies, blurring fantasy and reality and overstating cinematic influence. Devil in Disguise prioritizes victim lives by naming episodes after victims and dramatizing their pre-murder circumstances. The series alternates investigation and intimate victim portraits to expose police bias that enabled predation and subsequent media sensationalism. The victim-centered method reveals institutional failures and restores dignity to victims, while the sensational approach reduces victims to grisly props.
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