Il Mostro

The Roots of an Unsolved Mystery that still Haunts a Nation.

INTRO

There are stories that are born and grow with you, and The Monster of Florence was my dark lullaby companion growing up.

No, I’m not Italian, but Swiss—close enough to the border that Italian culture and its stories often slipped through. I remember being both terrified and mesmerised by the fear surrounding satanic cults and the “Pacciani trials.” They were constantly on the news.

After my cartoon-filled afternoons, I’d stay glued to the television, waiting for the latest update on Il Mostro di Firenze.

So, when Netflix announced its series “Il Mostro,” I approached it with cautious excitement. Having watched countless documentaries, films, and series about the case, I feared it would tread the same weary ground.

Thankfully, it doesn’t. Instead, it returns to the origins—before The Monster of Florence even existed. Finally—and I say this with some relief—Netflix delivers a true-crime series that transcends the formula of romanticising serial killers.

REVIEW

“The Monster” avoids mere sensationalism, examining the case through the fractured mirror of Italy’s 1960-1970s social perspective.

Starting from the notorious Sardinian trail and the double murder of Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco in 1968, director Stefano Sollima portrays not an unknown killer, but a festering web of family ties, superstition, and archaic power structures—the breeding ground from which countless lesser monsters could only emerge.

The only certainty that endures is the killer’s hatred of women—a sentiment reflective of the prevailing misogyny in society at that time.

Sollima and screenwriter Leonardo Fasoli craft a four-part miniseries with respect for both the victims and the enduring mystery surrounding this unsolved case.

“The Monster” doesn’t aim to give a name to il mostro di Firenze, nor does it chase any new twists.

By now, the story is familiar; what remains compelling is how evil takes root and expands—from the whispers of a small town to an obsession that captures a nation.

This is horror born of history: the kind that festers in the quiet corners of a society that would rather look away.

Each episode centres on a different suspect—from the Vinci brothers to the Mele clan—all potentially guilty, all tragically distant from the truth.

Whatever that truth is, it still hasn’t found peace, though the series could have delved deeper into the societal trauma that marked a generation of Italians.

“The Monster” still stands as one of the few true-crime works that understands horror not as spectacle, but as something rooted in the collective memory of a nation.