Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
In 1989, prostitute Aileen Wuornos befriends and enters a relationship with a young woman named Selby. Determined to straighten out her life, Aileen's limited education lands her back on the corner. She's raped by a trick, who she kills. A string of murder and robbery follows that ultimately leads Aileen to becoming America's first female serial killer.
Monster is carried almost entirely by Charlize Theron's extraordinary, Oscar-winning transformation into Aileen Wuornos — a genuinely exceptional performance that elevates the film well above its modest production. The plot is a fairly straightforward biopic/crime drama that follows a well-worn true-crime arc without major structural innovation, though it handles its subject with more empathy than exploitation. Cinematography is competent and gritty but unremarkable for its genre. Novelty is moderate — the female serial killer angle and the humanizing lens on Wuornos gave it a distinctive voice at the time, but the biopic framework is conventional. The ending is somber and inevitable given the true story, effective but not surprising.