Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes

Ed Gein

Play trailer Poster for Ed Gein 2001 1h 30m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
10% Tomatometer 10 Reviews 40% Popcornmeter 5,000+ Ratings
"Ed Gein" is based closely on the life of the famed Wisconsin serial killer. The kind folks in Plainfield, Wis., think Ed Gein is just a shy, eccentric farmer. But Ed knows differently. With the ghost of his mother compelling him, Ed can no longer resist the allure of Plainfield's women, and his fierce desire to experience a real, live kill or two.

Where to Watch

Ed Gein

Critics Reviews

View More (10)
Felix Vasquez Jr. Cinema Crazed Rated: 2/5 Oct 24, 2007 Full Review Rob Gonsalves Rob's Movie Vault Steve Railsback gives us probably the definitive cinematic Gein, and the movie is eminently worthwhile for him alone. Rated: B Jul 30, 2007 Full Review Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Never going past being creepy and unsettling. Rated: C+ Feb 12, 2007 Full Review Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Rated: 2/5 Aug 11, 2005 Full Review Scott Weinberg eFilmCritic.com Not really terrible, but way too dry and dull for any self-respecting serial killer biopic. Rated: 2/5 Apr 3, 2005 Full Review Frank Swietek One Guy's Opinion Rated: 1/5 Mar 29, 2004 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View More (209)
Andréa K The first two episodes are good, except for the distracting Winnie the Pooh voice. Laurie Metcalf is always excellent. The third episode was confusing. I couldn't tell what was real, what was psychosis, what the time line was, etc. I'm not sure I'll finish the series. Spoiler: Hitchcock was supposed to have been inspired by Gein when he wrote Psycho. Why would the casting of the movie and discussion with Hitchcock interrupt the storyline? It made it confusing & unwatchable. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 10/15/25 Full Review Nathan K. The only reason I'm docking a star is due to the inflation of the story and the choice for him to be ripped. The reason the story was written this way was for the viewer to feel lost and disjointed. Ed commonly referred to the episodes where he murdered people as dreams, forgetting how, why or what happened. There are so many simple people leaving one star reviews frustrated by the disjointed story, that can't realize the glaring meta story design. This could have been more tragic, painful, and brought a larger message about mental health. Ed lived in fear, but he almost seems cooperative with his mother. I wish Murphy would have leaned more into the sadness and darkness. More into the hallucinations. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 10/15/25 Full Review Paper Lions A Those people who thought it was a documentary are way off base. It's Ryan Murphy, for goodness sake. It was heart-wrenching towards the end. What a sad life he led. No real love at all. Treating corpses like they were real people was the only way he could deal with relationships. Very sad. Acting performances were off the charts by the two main leads. It was homage to the development of horror stories across the last fifty years. Not many to be accurate or depicting real events. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 10/11/25 Full Review Crystal M I have been a long time fan of the Ed Gein story, I’m also a big fan of the Monster series and Charlie Hunnam but my god this was terrible. The multiple story lines were haphazard and distracted from the main story of Ed and his victims, the voice of Ed with some of the humour also felt random and made the whole thing hard to take seriously. This was one of the worlds most twisted individuals and it just all felt very silly and bizarre. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 10/10/25 Full Review Alicia E Charlie hunnams acting is just amazing. But sadly this documentary wasn’t. Hardly any of it was based on any truth. (I only managed to watch the first four episodes, while forwarding certain parts). It was just so gross at times and I couldn’t stomach it. Genuinely the only way I got through four episodes was because Charlie was the actor. A proper documentary should be made based on facts and evidence. But well done Charlie. Always such a great actor!! 🩷 Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 10/10/25 Full Review Richard S While there are some moments of great acting I couldn’t get out of my head that this is it’s another money making exercise very loosely based on the sad life of a deeply messed up human being Think I would have preferred a documentary as this was a poor story using a very small amount of truth. I guess it did what it set out to do as I did watch it ……. Don’t believe the hype! Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 10/07/25 Full Review Read all reviews
Ed Gein

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW
The Caveman's Valentine 46% 51% The Caveman's Valentine Watchlist Madison 31% 50% Madison Watchlist Skins 59% 85% Skins Watchlist Wisconsin Death Trip 75% 64% Wisconsin Death Trip Watchlist The Minus Man 58% 45% The Minus Man Watchlist Discover more movies and TV shows. View More

Movie Info

Synopsis "Ed Gein" is based closely on the life of the famed Wisconsin serial killer. The kind folks in Plainfield, Wis., think Ed Gein is just a shy, eccentric farmer. But Ed knows differently. With the ghost of his mother compelling him, Ed can no longer resist the allure of Plainfield's women, and his fierce desire to experience a real, live kill or two.
Director
Chuck Parello
Producer
Mark Boot, Bill Cross, Hamish McAlpine, Michael Muscal, Scarlett Pettyjohn
Screenwriter
Stephen Johnston
Distributor
First Look
Production Co
Unapix Films, Kunert/Manes Entertainment, LLC
Genre
Drama
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
May 4, 2001, Wide
Release Date (Streaming)
Mar 10, 2017
Box Office (Gross USA)
$11.8K
Runtime
1h 30m
Sound Mix
Surround
Most Popular at Home Now