Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story’ On Netflix, About The Beverly Hills Brothers That Killed Their Abusive Parents

The first season of Netflix’s Monster anthology series was a huge hit for the service because creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan were able to make the familiar story about Jeffrey Dahmer fresh again through great performances and a different look at the events surrounding his arrest and trial. Now, the series examines the Lyle and Erik Menendez case.

MONSTERS: THE LYLE AND ERIK MENENDEZ STORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see palm trees and a 1980s-era limousine. Kenny G plays. In the limo are brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez (Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Cooper Koch).

The Gist: It’s 1989. The brothers are on their way to the memorial service of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez (Javier Bardem, Chloë Sevigny). The police are still investigating their murders, with speculation in the press that the killings might be a mafia hit. Erik starts to break down in the back of the limo, but his older brother Lyle talks about opening a chain of buffalo wing restaurants and wants the limo driver to turn off the soft jazz. They go through the door, despite the mob of press, because Lyle wants to reiterate the mafia theory. Then, during the memorial, Lyle has a Milli Vanilli song play over a slideshow of their parents.

Two months later, the police are still investigating the murders, and Erik can’t escape the nightmares he keeps having about the night his parents were killed. He walks into the den, where their bloodied bodies were, and the visions start. At the end of all of the nightmares, Erik puts a shotgun to his chin and pulls the trigger.

He is so haunted that he calls his psychologist, Dr. Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts), and wants his last appointment of the day. Even though Oziel assures him he’s not being recorded, Erik asks to go for a walk. It was there where Erik admits that he and Lyle killed their parents.

Rushing back to the office, Oziel tells Erik to go through the entire course of events, starting with the moment the idea came to him while watching the movie Billionaire Boys Club. When Oziel questions why the notion of killing his parents came into his head, Erik talks about how “domineering” his father was, and how enabling his mom was. Because she was “addicted to my dad,” they felt her life was empty and decided she needed to die, as well.

We see the brothers do the deed, including when Lyle went back in to finish off his mother after reloading. They then try to build an alibi. But when they get back to the house, they’re shocked to see no one there; they figured the shotgun blasts would lead someone to call 911.

Oziel contacts Lyle and tells him to come to the office; he also calls his former mistress, Judalon Smyth (Leslie Grossman), to come as “cover”. Lyle is in a rage when he arrives, and denies that whatever Erik said was true.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story is the second season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s anthology series Monster, which started by examining Jeffrey Dahmer. Of course, this isn’t the first scripted series about the Menendez brothers’ case: In 2017, NBC aired Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders.

Our Take: It’s interesting that Murphy and Brennan decided to dramatize the Menendez case, given that it was already dramatized in such a high-profile way seven years ago, and there have been numerous documentaries and docuseries about the case. In other words, is there any more that needs to be said about the case? Apparently there is, because the pair, along with Carl Franklin, the first episode’s director, manage to make a familiar case riveting again.

Even though the first episode doesn’t show it, it seems that Murphy and Brennan’s goal is to concentrate the narrative around the brothers’ home life, and how Jose and Kitty made their sons’ life miserable. When the boys were older, most of the abuse came in the form of verbal haranguing by Jose and some drug-addled enabling by Kitty; the incident that led Erik to hatch his plan involves Kitty ripping Lyle’s secret toupee off his head.

But there were also accusations of sexual abuse by Jose when the brothers were younger, which we’d imagine we’ll also see in flashback. In fact, the structure of the series, where the incidents of abuse and emotional neglect by Jose and Kitty will likely come up during the brothers’ questioning and trial, does a good job of peeling back the layers of the case without jumping around indiscriminately.

Koch and Chavez do a good job as Erik and Kyle, showing the two very different ways they reacted after they killed their parents. Of course, we also look forward to seeing more of Bardem (one of the show’s executive producers) and Sevingy as Jose and Kitty. Since the first episode was concentrated mostly on Erik’s confession to Ozeil, we don’t get to see Nathan Lane as journalist Dominick Dunne or Ari Graynor as Leslie Abramson, the brothers’ lawyer. But Roberts is appropriately scared and weaselly as Ozeil, whose dalliances with Smyth led to the mistress reporting the brothers’ admission.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, but the shooting scene is pretty damn violent.

Parting Shot: As they drive away from Ozeil’s office, Lyle tells Erik that they have to kill the psychologist.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Dallas Roberts as Ozeil; given how ethically compromised the good doctor was, Roberts plays him like a complete pushover.

Most Pilot-y Line: We get that the Menendezes loved Milli Vanilli, but we heard far too much of them during the first episode.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story takes a pretty familiar story and makes it compelling by shifting the narrative slightly and through some excellent performances.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.