Why Longlegs Director Oz Perkins Won't Be Watching Ryan Murphy's Ed Gein Netflix Series

The true crime genre is lurid by its very nature. We read and watch detailed accounts of monstrousness because these acts are utterly alien to our sane way of living. How do people break in as hideously a fashion as John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck, or Ted Bundy? We can't help but throw their lives under a microscope and try to figure out what twisted them.

I've read far too many books about serial killers, and have certainly watched my share of movies about these creatures. There is definitely a morbid fascination at play here, but I think this genre has genuine artistic merit if you can stomach the rough stuff. John McNaughton's "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" is a masterpiece of dead-eyed dread, and Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom" can't be scrubbed from your consciousness. They get at something about society's potential to distort the minds of lost/discarded people, and they aren't trying to get off on their characters' awfulness.

Ryan Murphy, however, is a sensationalist, and his turn into documenting the lives of serial killers via his "Monster" series has been little more than a wallow. His third season, "Monster: The Ed Gein Story," takes a meta approach to telling the tale of a murderer who inspired both "Psycho" and "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," but it is, at its core, a gory revel. The show goes beyond Gein's killing spree to examine his pop cultural imprint, which includes dipping in on the shooting of "Psycho" and Anthony Perkins' portrayal of the Gein-esque Norman Bates. TMZ asked Oz Perkins, the filmmaker son of the legendary actor, if he'd watched the show, and received a firm, disgusted no.

Perkins told TMZ that he had no interest in watching the series (which depicts Perkins struggling with his homosexuality) because it's complicit in turning true crime into "glamorous and meaningful content." Perkins has made some incredibly gory movies of late, but "Longlegs" and his adaptation of Stephen King's "The Monkey" are pure fiction. According to Perkins, shows like "Monster: The Ed Gein Story, are "increasingly devoid of context," while going on to say that "the Netflix-ization of real pain [i.e., the authentic human experiences wrought by 'actual events'] is playing for the wrong team."

Perkins would prefer that filmmakers peer "behind the veil into the unknowable and loving each other through expansive, new art." He'll have a go at that next month when his new, surrealistic horror film "Keeper," starring Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland, hits theaters. In the meantime, you can decide for yourself whether or not you need to let "Monster: The Ed Gein Story" into your life.