The Monster of Florence: what is Netflix’s new “true crime” worth? (critical)
Between investigation and fluoroscopy, Stefano Sollima transforms the news story of the “Monster of Florence” into a murky mirror of an entire sick society.
“Eight double murders. 17 years of terror. Always the same weapon. A Beretta caliber 22”.
After Suburra and Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Stefano Sollima dives into one of the most chilling news stories in Italy: the Monster of Florence. This unidentified serial killer is believed to be the author of eight double murders committed between 1968 and 1985 in Tuscany.
But rather than (re)searching for the culprit, the filmmaker dissects his country. The Florence Monster is not an investigation, it is an x-ray. Stefano Sollima refuses the single thesis, multiplies the avenues and illuminates the shadows without ever dissipating them. The staging alternates periods and views like so many broken mirrors, each fragment of which reveals a partial truth. The strangeness arises from this controlled disorder, from these shots where Tuscany is transformed into a mental terrain, haunted by fear, patriarchy, the authority of guilty families…
What is interesting here is the way in which Sollima derails true crime to question the collective psyche: in Florence as elsewhere, there is not one monster, but monsters — lurking in institutions, homes, ordinary silences. What if the most worrying thing was not the killer, but the society that gave birth to him?
The result is a series that is both flamboyant and dry, with a narrative that is sometimes a little too twisted, but inhabited by a real idea of cinema: making doubt a form of truth.
The Monster of Florence, mini-series in 4 episodes, to be discovered in France on October 22, 2025 on Netflix.
