Netflix ranks its series Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez in its well-stocked “true crime” sector. But how true is this popular miniseries about two brothers who murdered their parents in the summer of 1989 in a lavish Beverly Hills mansion?
Is the content of the nine episodes 40%, 60% or 80% true? This is what the viewer asks himself, every two minutes, while watching The story of Lyle and Erik Menendezwhich is full of extremely precise, scabrous and disgusting details.
The father who forces his 21-year-old son to wear a wig, the incestuous attacks with a toothbrush and Vaseline, the cinnamon sprinkled in his father’s coffee to make his sperm taste better, the sexual tension between Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and his younger brother Erik (Cooper Koch), it is impossible to separate reality from what has been grafted into the script to tell an even more twisted and disturbing story.
Since the release of this Ryan Murphy production (American Horror Story, Ratched), who never knits lace, it’s madness in the United States.
Hordes of young fans, who did not follow the legal saga at the time, came to the defense of the Menendez brothers based solely on the nine episodes manufactured – and fantasized – by Netflix.
The petition to release Lyle and Erik Menendez from their San Diego prison has accumulated more than 350,000 signatures.
A week after the miniseries went live, searches for the Menendez brothers jumped 2000% on Google, hello counter-fact-checking vortex (guilty!). And excerpts from the two trials of Lyle and Erik Menendez, held in the early 1990s, abound on TikTok and Instagram.
What is most shocking, I find, is the glamorous way that was chosen to portray the two murderous sons who were 21 and 18 years old, on the evening of August 20, 1989, when they shot their parents Kitty (Chloë Sevigny) and Jose Menendez (Javier Bardem). The scene of heads being blown off by shotguns looks like a hyper horror film gore and bloody.
PHOTO FROM THE SERIES, PROVIDED BY NETFLIX
Chloë Sevigny and Javier Bardem
Throughout the series, the camera films Lyle and Erik Menendez half-naked, or downright flambette, as if they were filming a homoerotic Calvin Klein perfume ad, bulging abs, square jaws, tense muscles, exposed package. It’s sunny, it’s hot, take out your Speedos.
The Menendez brothers, spoiled rich kids who play tennis, only wear designer clothes (Sergio Tacchini, long live the 1980s) and embody the perfect little American preppy, pastel Ralph Lauren knit tied on the shoulders.
Lyle is hateful, angry, unstable and navel-centered. A real hothead. Discreet and more shy, Erik is less sociopathic, in appearance. Moreover, it was Erik, full of remorse, who revealed the story to his shrink, which led to his arrest, as well as that of Lyle, six months after the carnage.
From the third episode, The story of Lyle and Erik Menendez insists on a crucial element, which was nevertheless excluded from the trials of the two Menendez brothers in 1993 and 1996. If they brutally killed their parents, it is because Lyle and Erik feared for their own lives and their physical safety.
For several years, Jose Menendez, a cruel, sadistic and manipulative man, allegedly sexually assaulted his eldest son Lyle, then his youngest son Erik. Even more twisted: Lyle also raped his brother Erik, which completely ruined the life of this Cuban-American family. Additionally, mother Kitty knew about the incest and chose to turn a blind eye.
American justice concluded that the Menendez brothers orchestrated the massacre of Jose and Kitty to pocket an inheritance of nearly 15 million, and not to protect themselves from their father.
From the family palace in Beverly Hills which once belonged to Prince and Elton John, Lyle and Erik end up in prison, where they demand self-tanner and adhesive tape to fix Lyle’s wig, which he washes directly in the wash basin. toilet. They are unbearable, especially Lyle, a real psychopath. At his mother Kitty’s funeral, a few months before the police nabbed him, Lyle had the audacity to play the song Girl, I’m Gonna Miss You by Milli Vanilli. Bad maniac.
But did it really happen? The answer: yes, it is a verified fact. For the rest, you have to take The story of Lyle and Erik Menendez for what it is: thrilling, repetitive, but very effective entertainment, freely inspired by a horrible crime perpetrated in cold blood.
From an aesthetic point of view, this Netflix series smells of hair spray and Drakkar Noir with its Reebok Pumps, its polo sweaters with raised collars, its bright colors of Miami Vice and its Adidas Samba shoes, back on the shelves of trendy boutiques.
PHOTO FROM THE SERIES, PROVIDED BY NETFLIX
Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez
Basically, we should not try to determine whether the brothers are victims of their dad or simply money-hungry monsters. It’s just impossible to redo the work of the courts and detectives.
The Menendez brothers’ idols, Milli Vanilli, sang Girl You Know It’s True at the time of the homicides. We would like to believe in the truth of Lyle and Erik, but the line between fiction and reality has been far too blurred. And the only thing the Menendezes can now blame, like Milli Vanilli, is the rain.