‘Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story’ Trailer Turns a 19th-Century Axe Murder Into Ryan Murphy’s Latest True Crime Spectacle as Release Date Is Confirmed

Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s “Monster” anthology has built its entire identity around forcing audiences to sit uncomfortably close to America’s most infamous killers, and each new season has arrived with a fresh wave of controversy attached. What began with a look at Jeffrey Dahmer expanded into the Menendez brothers and, most recently, Ed Gein, each installment sparking fierce debate over whether the series illuminates or exploits its real-life subjects.

That controversy has followed the franchise closely enough that even its creators have had to respond directly to accusations of glamorizing violence. Brennan pushed back on that criticism after the Ed Gein season, insisting the show is “always trying to not be exploitative” and that it’s “trying to actually show that you can pull back too much when you’re telling a macabre story.”

Now the anthology is heading somewhere entirely different in both era and subject. Netflix has released the first teaser trailer for “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story,” the fourth installment in the series, confirming a September 17 premiere date for the show’s eight-episode season.

Ella Beatty stars as Lizzie Borden, the infamous 19th-century woman accused of hacking her father and stepmother to death with an axe in 1892, a case that ended in her acquittal despite the gruesome nature of the charges. The teaser is set to the eerie “Lizzie Borden took an axe” nursery rhyme that has followed the case through more than a century of pop culture retellings, closing on a bloodied, stunned-looking Beatty as a voiceover intones a grim variation of the familiar verse.

Beatty marks the franchise’s first female “monster,” following a run of male killers that gave the series much of its early notoriety. According to the show’s official logline, the story centers on a repressed daughter and her rebellious maid, Bridget Sullivan, trapped inside a home built on humiliation, escaping into a fantasy world of sex, power, and revenge.

The cast surrounding Beatty carries plenty of familiar names from the anthology’s recent history. Charlie Hunnam, who played the title role in last season’s Ed Gein installment, returns as Lizzie’s father Andrew Borden, while Vicky Krieps takes on the role of Bridget Sullivan and Rebecca Hall plays Lizzie’s stepmother, Abby Borden. Billie Lourd and Jessica Barden round out the principal cast.

Ian Brennan wrote every episode of the new season, continuing the same structure used for the Ed Gein installment, with Brennan and Murphy executive producing alongside Max Winkler, Eric Kovtun, Scott Robertson, Louise Shore, Nissa Diederich, Todd Kubrak, Carl Franklin, and Tanase Popa. Winkler also directs the season alongside Sarah Adina Smith.

Beatty’s casting followed what’s been described as an extensive search process by Murphy and Brennan to find the right actress for such a demanding role. She previously appeared in Murphy’s “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” and more recently starred in Mary Bronstein’s Sundance-acclaimed “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” giving her a growing résumé of prestige credits heading into her biggest role yet.

Given how much scrutiny the “Monster” franchise has faced over its treatment of real victims and their families, choosing a case where every person involved has been dead for well over a century seems like a deliberate shift in approach. Whether that historical distance changes how critics and audiences respond to the show’s stylized violence remains an open question heading into its September release.

For a franchise that’s consistently generated both massive viewership and intense backlash in equal measure, “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story” looks poised to continue that pattern, just with a 130-year-old case standing in for the show’s usual modern true crime fodder. All eight episodes drop on Netflix September 17.

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