The Monster of Florence Review
Director: Stefano Sollima
Date Created: 2025-10-22 19:03
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The Monster of Florence Review: Il mostro, is an Italian four-part true crime series on Netflix directed by Stefano Sollima, the mastermind behind dramas such as ZeroZeroZero and Gomorrah. It features Marco Bullitta, Valentino Mannias, Francesca Olia, and Giacomo Fadda, among others. Close to an hour long per episode, the series dramatises the infamous 1968-1985 Italian province of Florence-based brutal murders of couples that shook the region.
The Monster of Florence Review
The series doesn’t only reexperience the crime; it seeks to relive the confusion, the paranoia, and the social tension all centred on it. But where Netflix’s The Monster of Florence excels at imagery and creepy tension, it approaches the limit of your patience far, far more than it sustains your attention.
The Monster of Florence Series gets off to a sombre start. The narrative opens with the death of Barbara Locci and her lover, a crime that would eventually become the linchpin of a long string of murders. The program takes its time untangling the way this initial incident opened the floodgates to years of terror, paranoia, and limitless speculation.
Initially, the prospect of viewing the most well-known cold case in Italy was intriguing. Once again, though, I was just as bewildered as intrigued. By the fragmented, protracted format of the program, flitting back and forth through the decades and through various suspects, the program gets confusing. Admittedly, the producers were trying their best to recreate just how crazy the actual investigation was, but by trying so hard, the narrative gets confusing.
I praise the series for not glorifying the killer or turning the case into a salacious soap opera. Instead, the series frames the social ills of the era, evident in present-day Italy, specifically the misogyny and institutional shortcomings which comprised the case. Nevertheless, the narration could have been narrowed down, and some emotional nuance could have improved the mystery.
If there’s one thing Netflix’s The Monster of Florence absolutely nails, it’s the atmosphere. The direction is visually impressive. He turns the peaceful Tuscan countryside into a landscape full of hidden fear. The contrast between the beautiful scenery and the horrifying crimes gives the show a haunting edge.
The acting, too, is good. Marco Bullitta does particularly fine work as Stefano Mele, the suspended man between powerlessness and shame. Francesca Olia, as Barbara Locci, lends quiet strength to the part, but the script does not give her much scope to be fully realised. Some of the female characters are defined as much by the gaze of the men observing them as by any autonomous movement of their own, and, while deliberate, periodically make the series emotionally distant.
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I liked how the show doesn’t rely on jump scares and dark foreboding music to lure viewers in. Instead, it raises tension through silence and uncertainty. It lingers the camera on empty streets, quiet dinners, and terrified glances, scenes which are much more descriptive than any lines of script.
What sets The Monster of Florence Netflix Series apart from most true crime dramas is the fact that it’s not so much about unravelling the puzzle as it is the individuals impacted by it. The police, the families, the suspects, they all appear trapped by a pattern of confusion and fear. The show wisely employs this confusion to remark on the way truth gets compromised where society operates under the pressure of rumour.
Il mostro provides us insight, as well, into the national culture of the time, how preconceived ideas, male chauvinism, and provincial politics defined justice. It becomes less centred on the murderer and more on the failure of society. That’s a nice twist, but the series did not compensate as much as I would have liked by broadening the plot further through characters.
Sometimes the series comes too much from an analytic place, as if it is observing the crime through binoculars and not engaging us in the emotional pandemonium of it. For me, the sense of emotional investment just didn’t come. I desired the horror, the grief, the panic, but all of it just brought distance.
For a show about this kind of macabre crime, Italian series The Monster of Florence moves at an exceptionally slow rate. It plods through the middle episodes, and the fact that there isn’t any clear lead character makes it increasingly hard to become engaged. Each episode focuses on someone new, suspecting, which is an excellent idea, but it also disrupts the momentum. You become so immersed in one thread, and the program cuts to another.
It doesn’t give much resolution by the end, and this is both the weakness and the strength of the film. True to life, naturally: the case wasn’t cracked. You, though, do succeed in making viewers like me just shy of completion. After four hours, you don’t feel you have learned much beyond what you knew going into the viewing experience.
Netflix The Monster of Florence Review: Summing Up
Overall, The Monster of Florence is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s an Italian dark, well-made series that deserves credit for approaching thorny real-world crime mysteries with reverence and gravitas. It looks good, the acting rings true, and the social commentary is substantial. But as viewing, it’s inconsistent. Slow pacing, complicated structure, and emotional remove make it a series you have to admire, but not exactly enjoy. It’s not the type of crime drama which you watch, glued to the screen, but it’s the type of crime drama which makes you think, but puts your patience to the test.
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