The story of Aileen Wuornos has been told before – in the 1992 documentary Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer; in the 1992 movie Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story, in which she was played by Jean Smart; and in the 2003 movie Monster, where she was played by Charlize Theron. And now it’s being told again in Netflix’s Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers.
The 1992 documentary has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critical rating, the 1992 movie was well received and the 2003 movie won an Oscar for Theron. Which makes me wonder: why return to such a well-trodden path? What part of this horrible story hasn’t already been told, and told well?
Who was Aileen Wuornos?
Wuornos was executed in 2002 for the murders of seven men in Florida in a case that gripped the whole country. Wuornos, a sex worker with a horrific past, claimed that her first killing was in self-defense but pleaded no contest to the others.
That first plea forms a key part of the new documentary, which presents her testimony about a brutal sexual assault – and which doesn’t cut away for talking heads to comment, letting Wuornos tell her story without interruption. The film also shows the wider picture: the bias against her as a woman and as a sex worker, the sensational news reporting, the shocking rhetoric of the lead prosecutor and more.
The goal, says director Emily Turner, is to drop you into the investigation: “We wanted it to feel like you were watching the rushes of the story unfolding with the people who were on the inside,” she told Netflix’s Tudum.
“It’s so much easier to write off someone who’s done such heinous acts as a cold-blooded murderer rather than a deeply damaged human,” Turner explains. “Actually, she was made, and that’s chilling.”
That’s not to say that the new documentary is taking Wuornos’s side. “There are some people who talk about whether she’s a feminist icon. I think the truth of what she did is brutal,” Turner says. “There are victims at the forefront of this, and they remain at the forefront of our minds.”
She continues: “We want her to be either the hapless victim where society created her, and life just happened to her – or she’s this cold-blooded murderer. I don’t think either of them does her justice. She’s charismatic, and she’s a killer. … It’s just so much easier to be categorical,” Turner says. “But that’s not life, is it?”
Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers is streaming now on Netflix.
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