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Netflix has unveiled the first official trailer for Monster: The Ed Gein Story, offering a chilling preview of the series’ descent into horror. The footage centers on police responders as they first enter Gein’s isolated Wisconsin farmhouse. Their flashlights cut through the darkness to reveal a house of horrors, including furniture upholstered in human skin and terrifying masks crafted from the faces of his victims. The trailer builds its dread before culminating in a brief but unforgettable glimpse of Hunnam in the title role. Unrecognizable and deeply unsettling, he is seen sewing together pieces of corpses, his actions seemingly guided by a disembodied voice only he can hear.
Gein was a murderer and grave robber active in the 1950s whose crimes were discovered after the disappearance of a local hardware store owner, leading police to uncover his grotesque collection of human trophies. The trailer also explicitly underlines how Ed Gein’s real-life atrocities became the direct inspiration for some of cinema’s most iconic horror stories. This connection is explored in depth, referencing how Gein’s twisted relationship with his mother and his work with human remains formed the blueprint for Norman Bates in Psycho. Furthermore, his penchant for creating masks from human skin and furniture from bones directly influenced the creation of Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He was also part of the inspiration for the killer in The Silence of the Lambs.
