Monster tells the doomed story of Aileen Wuornos dubbed the world’s first female serial killer following her plunge from a life of abuse, prostitution, lesbianism, alcoholism and depression to one that included murder.

Wuornos’s story is the stuff of nightmares – she was abandoned by her mother as a baby – left to rot and grew up as a drop-out and an outcaste who started turning tricks at the tender age of 13. Her life was that of the most pitiful “white trash” – wallowing in the proverbial gutter with no respite and no prospects of anything better. The movie picks up from the time that the deeply depressed and aimlessly drifting Wuornos first meets a person who was to represent the first and only meaningful relationship she ever had with anyone, man or woman. Tyria Moore or Selby as she is in the film first met Aileen Wuornos at a well known Daytona Beach “Dyke Bar” where the two of them end up getting very merrily drunk together, hitting it off perfectly. Both women are in desperate need of a friend and it seems they may have discovered exactly that in one another.

Their relationship develops and eventually Selby leaves her family “closet” to take up with Lee (Aileen) but soon Aileen’s depleted prostitution earnings run out and Selby starts to pressurize her to bring more and more money home. Aileen picks up a John one typical evening who turns nasty on her – a turning point in the Wuornos criminal career as in desperation and legitimate self defence she blows the sadist away at point blank range. A few days pass uneventfully but when Selby starts demanding more money and claims that she is starving to death, Wuornos attempts to “go straight” – applying for various jobs but being rejected wherever she goes. The realization then dawns on her that all she is and ever will be is a hooker and she returns to the street while Selby sits fretting in the rented fleapit apartment doing absolutely nothing.

All this is taking place while a cancer of hatred against all the humiliation and the degradation grows within Aileen Wuornos and there is a fierce and latent desire to seek justice and set all the wrongs against her right – as she sees fit. The film does a fairly faithful job of recounting the last months of Lee Wuornos’s story before she was convicted and executed. The film scores big points for the top rate performances of the lead actors and the non sensationalist, non judgemental approach that director Patti Jenkins adopts.

Charlize Theron who picked up an Oscar for her role as Lee Wuornos has undergone a stunning physical transformation for the film. The make up genius who has worked on her in this film has worked wonders to turn Ms Theron into the masculine trailer trash that Aileen Wuornos represented. The rest of the wonders are Charlize Theron’s fantastically “true” performance as Lee Wuornos. It did help just a tad that Charlize Theron, on a really foul day does indeed slightly resemble Lee Wuornos on one of her brighter days. None the less, everything about her acting smacks of authenticity and her performance is easily the most memorable aspect of the film along with the grisly and tragic story itself. Christina Ricci too is impressive as Selby/Tyria Moore though Ms Ricci is a far cry from what Tyria Moore looked like however “ugly” and butch the filmmakers try to make her look.

It’s a thought provoking film about a subject that still raises debate – years after Aileen Wuornos was put down in the electric chair. Was she a serial killer in the accepted sense of the word or was she basically a robber with a grudge against men who was “hen pecked” by her lover to go out and find more money. Wuornos was similarly emotionally blackmailed when Tyria threatened to commit suicide forcing Lee to start making confessions to the authorities where she mistakenly expected clemency but all she got was the same rejection she had been used to all her life. She had all the makings of a monster and circumstance just pushed her over the edge turning her into a blinded-by-hate-and-injustice-and-anger monster that couldn’t stop herself once she started to kill.

The question is, is there more to Charlize Theron’s performance than the startling physical transformation? Answer – Once you’ve gotten over how unattractive Ms Theron has been made to appear and how chillingly accurate a likeness of Lee Wuornos has been recreated – one can sit back and enjoy an acting tour de force where every nuance of her character has been recreated brilliantly. This is a performance that easily manages to live up to its Pre-Oscar hype. One wonders how many young Hollywood starlets would crave the role of an ageing and notably unattractive lesbian prostitute turned serial killer? One also wonders who is the beneficiary of the profits that this film is making especially in the wake of the Best Actress Oscar….which is a reminder of another debate – should killers be allowed to make money by selling their stories for movie, TV or book deals and the like? Also, there is a tangible sense of irony in that a woman who was forced to kill and prostitute herself for money is now the subject of a multi million dollar earning Oscar winning film – if only Lee Wuornos could have had even .05% of the films earnings while she was alive, would things have turned out differently? Maybe, maybe not.

Life can be so bizarre and so unkind. Fate dealt Aileen Wuornos the worst ever hand – a setback there was no recovering from. Hopefully a percentage of the millions the film is earning is being earmarked for the families of the victims though one would hate to think that Tyria Moore, alive and well after her “deal” with the authorities is to benefit by even one cent even if she didn’t actually murder anyone herself. This film together with the film The Selling of a Serial Killer and Michael Reynolds book Dead Ends manages to give one a fair insight into the doomed world inhabited by Aileen Wuornos.