Netflix drops chilling new ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’ trailer for latest Ryan Murphy anthology [WATCH]
Netflix on Tuesday dropped an unsettling new teaser trailer promoting “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” – the second true-crime anthology from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan – that premieres on September 19. The nine-part limited series follows the Emmy-winning 2022 saga “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” that earned a statuette for Niecy Nash-Betts. The streamer released the nearly minute-long teaser that serves to drum up interest in a story that became the stuff of tabloid legend. Watch the new trailer above.
“Monsters” chronicles the real-life case of brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who on August 20, 1989 murdered their wealthy parents Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez in the den of their Beverly Hills home. They were convicted of the ghastly crime in 1996. However, the logline for the series reads, “While the prosecution argued they were seeking to inherit their family fortune, the brothers claimed – and remain adamant to this day, as they serve life sentences without the possibility of parole – that their actions stemmed out of fear from a lifetime of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents.
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The series dives into the historic case that took the world by storm, paved the way for audiences’ modern-day fascination with true crime, and in return asks those audiences: Who are the real monsters? Javier Bardem stars as Jose Menendez, while Chloe Sevigny portrays his wife Kitty. Nicholas Alexander Chavez plays Lyle Menendez and Cooper Koch his brother Erik. Also cast are Nathan Lane as writer and investigative journalist Dominick Dunne and Ari Graynor as the Menendez brothers’ defense attorney Leslie Abramson.
The trailer focuses on the public vs. private lives of the Menendez clan. It begins with Jose and Kitty posing for a family portrait with Lyle and Erik, all of them dressed to the nines, looking like the literal embodiment of a picture-perfect family. But voiceovers reveal the painful reality beneath the facade. “I need to know what’s going on with you and the boys,” Sevigny’s Kitty says, to which Bardem’s Jose asks, “What do you mean?” Kitty then emphasizes she doesn’t want there to be “any more lies between us” and promises “I won’t tell anyone.” Jose vows in voiceover, “I’m going to fix this family.”
As the trailer draws to a close, the brothers, now alone, are shirtless, embracing in the dark. One of them says, “It’s just us now” as a gunshot rings out.
The writers of “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” are Murphy, Brennan, David McMillan, Todd Kubrak and Reilly Smith. Directors are Brennan, Max Winkler, Paris Barclay, Michael Uppendahl and Carl Franklin.
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