Netflix’s ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’ draws criticism, raising concerns about true crime entertainment

The second season of “Monsters” — Ryan Murphy’s Netflix true crime series — is drawing intense criticism.
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” tells a fictionalized version of the lives of Erik and Lyle Menendez, two brothers who were convicted of the 1989 murder of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, as previously reported by the Deseret News.
The case, which has long held the public’s fascination and is the subject of multiple documentaries, has been heavily debated since the Menendez brothers were convicted in 1993. The question isn’t if Erik and Lyle killed their parents, but why.
Both brothers claim that they killed their parents “out of fear and in self-defense after a lifetime of physical, emotional and sexual abuse suffered at the hands of their parents,” according to CBS News.
But no evidence of the alleged abuse was presented in the brothers’ 1990 or 1993 trials, or evidence hearings, according to Newsweek.
Investigative journalist Robert Rand, author of “The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation,” recently discovered a letter from Erik Menendez to his cousin, Andy Cano, recounting José Menendez‘s alleged abuse.
The letter reads, according to Newsweek, “I’ve been trying to avoid dad. It’s still happening Andy but its worse for me now. … I need to put it out of my mind. I know what you said before but I’m afraid. You just don’t know dad like I do. He’s crazy! He’s warned me a hundred times about telling anyone.”
In response to the public discourse on the Menendez brothers, “Monsters” seemed to promise a nuanced portrayal of the case.
“Who are the real monsters?” Netflix asked in a promo of the series.
But since the release of “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” both the show and Murphy have been criticized by viewers and critics — and by Erik Menendez himself.
Critics have a variety of issues with “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
The Guardian gave “Monsters” two out of five stars, writing that the show was likely meant “to come across as multifaceted.”
“Instead, it’s an exhausting, repetitive alternation between two overplayed notes: the brothers as victims twisted and broken by years of abuse, and the brothers as delusional, sloppy, possibly sociopathic connivers,” The Guardian wrote.
IndieWire gave the show a C minus, calling it a “crock pot of cracked theories” and “smutty true crime recreations,” saying that it confused “perspective for speculation.”
As IndieWire put it, “Monsters” is “a true crime retelling so obsessed with the same question posed 30 years ago that it loses any perspective of its own.”
This is where most of the public criticism lies: that “Monsters” gives merit and time to salacious, half-baked theories.
One of the most notable — and most criticized — theories given screen time on “Monsters” is that Erik and Lyle had an overly close, potentially incestuous relationship.
Rand, the investigative journalist, said that this innuendo is “pure fiction,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Erik Menendez criticized the series as a whole in a statement shared to X by his wife, Tammi Menendez.
The statement read, “Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander.”
He continued, “It is sad for me to know that Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward.”
The extended Menendez family also spoke out against “Monsters” and Murphy in a statement shared on X, claiming that Murphy “never spoke to us.”
The family — who said that they are “virtually the entire extended family of Erik and Lyle Menendez” — called the Netflix true crime series “phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare that is not only riddled with mistruths and outright falsehoods but ignores the most recent exculpatory revelations.”
The statement continues, “Murphy claims he spent years researching the case but in the end relied on debunked Dominick Dunne, the pro-prosecution hack, to justify his slander against us and never spoke to us.”
In response to Erik Menendez’s statement, Murphy told Entertainment Tonight, “I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show. It’s really hard, if it’s your life, to see your life up on screen.”
“It’s a 35-, 30-year-old case. We show many, many, many perspectives. That’s what the show does in every episode. You are given a new theory based on people who were either involved or covered the case,” he said.
“Some of the controversy seems to be people thinking for example, that the brothers are having an incestuous relationship,” Murphy continued. “There are people who say that never happened. There were people who said it did happen.”
This isn’t the first time Murphy has come under fire for his true crime portrayals. The first season of “Monsters” — “Monsters: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” — was criticized for its portrayal of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and his victims.
As previously reported by the Deseret News, Rita Isbell, the sister of Errol Lindsey, one of Dahmer’s victims, told Insider that watching the series “felt like reliving it all over again.” She called the series “harsh and careless,” saying that “they’re just making money off of this tragedy.”
“That’s just greed,” Isbell said.
Murphy defended the series at the time, saying, according to Deadline, “We weren’t really interested in Dahmer the monster.”
“It was (about) who was complicit in making the monster. There were many, many different things involved in that. It was a complicated human story … it tackled systemic racism, homophobia. We were always thinking of the victims,” Murphy said.
The ethics of society’s semi-recent true crime obsession have been called into question repeatedly in recent years.
With TV shows like “Monsters,” critics argue that true crime entertainment simply rehashes the trauma of the violent crimes being depicted without providing fresh perspectives and nuance, and without consulting with the families of victims. That’s why true crime entertainment can re-traumatize those involved with the case.
Associate professor of American studies Jason Ruiz, who specializes in streaming services, told Newsweek in 2022 that, while true crime is popular, “movies and series that can claim to be ‘based on a true story’” cause some to be “uncomfortable about the exploitation of violence and trauma on a platform such as Netflix.”
According to Ruiz, such criticism “raises serious questions about who gets to tell which ‘true’ stories — and who should profit from the telling.”
Annie Nichol, writer and activist, recounted her own experience with true crime in her essay for The New York Times, “My Sister Was Murdered 30 Years Ago. True Crime Repackages Our Pain as Entertainment.”
“In the 1990s you would have been hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t know the name of my sister Polly Klaas,” Nichol wrote. “I was 6 years old when a stranger abducted 12-year-old Polly from our bedroom on the evening of Oct. 1, 1993.”
Nichol wrote of the “media frenzy” both before and after her sister’s body was found, and her dismay at the popularity of true crime, specifically calling out “Monsters: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.”
“As a survivor whose tragedy continues to be exploited by creators of true crime stories, I know the personal pain of this appropriation, as well as how coverage of these high-profile cases can contribute to broader injustices,” she wrote.
Nichol continued, “The exploitation of victims’ stories often carries a steep cost for their families as their tragedies are commodified and their privacy repeatedly violated for mass consumption.”