Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman’ on Netflix, A Needless Extra Chapter In The Serial Killer’s Story

Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman had a cup of coffee in theaters last year before migrating to VOD and eventually landing here on Netflix. And it refers to itself as a “companion piece” to Monster, the 2003 film which featured Charlize Theron in an Oscar-winning turn as Wuornos. But with its Netflix slot, what it really feels like a companion to is star Peyton List’s other appearances on the streamer, namely in Bunk’d and Cobra Kai.

AILEEN WUORNOS: AMERICAN BOOGEYWOMAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: American Boogeywoman opens with the Aileen Wournos we know from Monster. It’s 2002, and she’s serving time on Florida’s death row for the murders of seven men. She’s also telling her life story to a documentary filmmaker, and with that hook we flash back to 1974, where in quick succession Aileen (Peyton List) rolls a john for his wallet at knifepoint, wanders onto a private beach, meets rich girl Jennifer (Lydia Hearst), and inserts herself into Florida society with a bang-bang marriage to her new friend’s tycoon father, a kindly, sickly old guy named Lewis Fell (Tobin Bell) who’s known around town as “Commodore.” The daughter, of course, is incensed. “I really hope we can be friends again someday, Jen,” Aileen says. And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

As the older Aileen’s voiceover makes it clear, she loves the perks, but has no intention of honoring the marriage. “Do I feel bad about what I did?” she asks. “Hell if I know.” (Ashley Atwood plays “Older Aileen.”) She sneaks off to the Last Resort bar when Lewis falls asleep, where she does blow and stabs a guy. She goes out on the Commodore’s yacht and assaults a rich knucklehead named Grady (Swen Temmel) below deck as Grady’s dad Victor (Nick Vallelonga) is asking Lewis how much he really knows about his new wife. And she writes herself checks out of Lewis’s ledger book, has Jennifer removed as her father’s beneficiary, and insults the local gentry while generally acting like the hardscrabble drifter she is.

Victor, who’s also Lewis’s accountant, quickly discovers Aileen’s checkered past. He offers her $10,000 to walk away from the marriage, but that goes badly for Victor, as well as his son Grady. The destruction is piling up behind Aileen in this rich new life of hers, but there are others on her tail, too, namely her older brother Keith (Joseph Scwartz) – he wants his cut – as well as Jen and her boyfriend, who are doing some investigating of their own. And when she can no longer lie, stab, or shoot her way out of a corner, it’s the Commodore, Lewis Fell, who has to clean up the mess his marriage to Aileen Wuornos made.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Boogeywoman writer-director Daniel Farrands also helmed Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman (2021) and The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019), widely derided true crime quickies that employed a similar stunt casting trick. For those films, instead of Disney Channel star List as Aileen Wuornos, it was former WB/CW dreamboat Chad Michael Murray as Ted Bundy, while Hilary Duff – Lizzie McGuire herself – played Tate.

Performance Worth Watching: There are at least a few lines in the American Boogeywoman script that must have inspired Peyton List to sign on to this thing. After all, when you’ve made your mark on squeaky clean kid’s shows like Jessie and Bunk’d, it’s gotta be at least a little tantalizing to play a killer drifter without a conscience who regularly spouts stuff like “You needle-dicked, mother-fucking, piece of shit, you’re gonna turn and go back out there and tell your daddy it’s time to go and never show your face around me again. You dig?”

Memorable Dialogue: “American Boogeywoman periodically drifts into hamfisted noir, but can’t sustain the style visually, and it definitely can’t sustain it with rote line reads like Jennifer musing “What’s that old saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer…”

Sex and Skin: Nothing overt.

Our Take: “You don’t jab a rattlesnake with a stick and expect it won’t bite you back.” Ashley Atwood, who plays death row Aileen Wournos, ekes out as much as she can from the voiceover that occasionally surfaces in American Boogeywoman. And Peyton List does get a few opportunities to swear up a storm while holding knives to men’s necks. But the film’s attempt to consider Wournos as a kind of femme fatale or warrior against toxic masculinity doesn’t align with all of the other times it’s referring to its main character as a psychopath. It’s also suggested that the tale we’re watching of Aileen’s marriage to Lewis and the resulting chaos is just a death row inmate’s fantasy, but that isn’t supported enough by the writing or plotting to matter. American Boogeywoman wants to be deliciously trashy, a bristly noir full of scheming people and shocking bloodshed. But it’s mostly watery, and clunks between sequences so awkwardly that Atwood’s narration becomes the best thing it has going for it.

As for List, she does a teeth-baring, hard-breathing take on the older Wournos’ infamous cracked rictus for about half her scenes, and the rest of the time lets sunglasses or a pair of cowboy boots try to carry the character. But that isn’t entirely her fault, since there’s very little at all to work with here.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman wants to be another chapter in the Monster story, but it’s not clear who asked for this to be told, and besides that, it reads flimsier than a grocery store tabloid.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges