Netflix has officially handed Lizzie Borden the axe.
The first teaser for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story dropped Tuesday, giving viewers their first bloody look at Ella Beatty as one of America’s most infamous accused killers.
The fourth installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime anthology arrives on Netflix September 17.
And this time, Monster is turning its attention to a case that has been haunting New England for more than 130 years.
Ella Beatty Becomes Lizzie Borden
Beatty stars as Lizzie Borden, the Massachusetts woman who was tried and acquitted of murdering her father, Andrew Borden, and stepmother, Abby Borden, with an axe in 1892.
Netflix’s teaser wastes very little time establishing the mood.
Beatty appears blood-spattered as Lizzie while the series leans into the sinister mythology that has surrounded the Borden case for generations.
But The Lizzie Borden Story isn’t simply positioning its central character as another entry in a lineup of infamous killers.
According to Beatty, the season is interested in something bigger.
“This season gives us our first female Monster and delves into female rage and repression,” Beatty told Netflix’s Tudum, adding that she found those themes “strikingly relevant.”
That distinction could give Season 4 a very different flavor from the anthology’s previous subjects.
‘Monster’ Heads to Fall River, Massachusetts
The series will explore the wealthy New England household surrounding Lizzie and the circumstances leading up to the brutal murders that made her a permanent fixture of American true-crime folklore.
Netflix describes the story as following a repressed daughter and the family’s rebellious live-in maid as they become trapped inside a home defined by cruelty and humiliation, eventually escaping into fantasies involving sex, power and revenge.
The cast surrounding Beatty is stacked.
Vicky Krieps plays Bridget Sullivan, the Borden family’s maid, while Charlie Hunnam returns to the Monster anthology as Lizzie’s father, Andrew Borden, after previously starring as Ed Gein.
Rebecca Hall plays Lizzie’s stepmother Abby, Billie Lourd appears as her older sister Emma, and Jessica Barden plays actor Nance O’Neil.
Lizzie Borden Becomes ‘Monster’s’ First Female Subject
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story marks the fourth chapter of Murphy and Brennan’s Netflix anthology.
The series previously tackled Jeffrey Dahmer, brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez and Ed Gein before turning its focus to Borden.
Lizzie’s case remains particularly fascinating because of what never happened: she was never convicted.
Borden was acquitted following a sensational trial, but the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden were never solved, leaving more than a century for speculation, books, movies, television adaptations and one extremely catchy — if historically inaccurate — nursery rhyme to transform Lizzie into something much larger than the woman who actually stood trial.
Now Netflix is taking its swing.
And judging from the blood covering Ella Beatty’s face in the first teaser, Monster isn’t exactly planning a restrained interpretation.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story premieres September 17 on Netflix.
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