{"id":227625,"date":"2025-10-15T23:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T23:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/227625\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T23:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T23:17:08","slug":"devil-in-disguise-john-wayne-gacy-review-peacocks-sober-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/227625\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy’ Review: Peacock’s Sober Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNearly six full hours into Peacock\u2019s Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy<\/a>, we finally see the eponymous serial killer applying make-up and donning the clown costume that, for many viewers, is inextricably linked to Gacy\u2019s murderous reign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe moment is striking and also, if I\u2019m being completely honest, corny. It\u2019s a wild reversal from the relative subtlety of the first three-quarters of the limited series, the sort of iconographic emergence one might expect in a Superman (the first time Clark Kent removes his glasses and takes flight) or a Batman (Bruce Wayne covering his head in a black cowl).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDevil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tLeaves no time for clowning around.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAirdate: Thursday, October 16 (Peacock)
Cast: Michael Chernus, Gabriel Luna, James Badge Dale, Michael Angarano, Chris Sullivan, Marin Ireland
Creator: Patrick Macmanus\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tAt home, I literally sighed and wrote, \u201cHere comes the Monster version of the series.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor years, across various franchises on FX and Netflix, Murphy and his collaborators have often broadly insisted that their latest serial killer opus wasn\u2019t driven by fetishistic ghoulishness but, instead, a desire to honor the victims and\/or the sociological context enabling the malevolent antihero. That desire apparently only lasts until the first opportunity to show Charlie Hunnam masturbating in frilly lingerie<\/a>; from there, operatic monstrosity ensues. (Credit where it\u2019s due: Sometimes Murphy and company have truly succeeded. The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story<\/a> suffered from comparisons to the flashier O.J. Simpson story<\/a>, but it\u2019s ultimately a much more complex and humane work.)<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Patrick Macmanus, creator of Devil in Disguise, isn\u2019t playing that game. Our first glimpse of Gacy in full harlequin regalia is our last. No clowning mayhem ensues. <\/p>\n

\n\tInstead of the orgiastic madhouse that fans of Monster and American Horror Story<\/a> have grown accustomed to, Devil in Disguise is a somber affair, as aesthetically chilly as a December in Des Plaines, Illinois. In eight hours spent depicting one of the most prolific spree killers and sexual predators in American history, the onscreen violence is almost exclusively psychological. And although Michael Chernus<\/a> gives an impressively unsettling performance in the main role, this is actually a serial killer drama in which the humanity of the victims, the challenges for law enforcement and the unfolding of a complex thesis on the genre are given equal \u2014 and eventually more than equal \u2014 time to the carnage.<\/p>\n

\n\tMacmanus slightly overplays his hand and slightly overpopulates the show\u2019s world. A tighter version of the story \u2014 six hours, perhaps \u2014 would be less draining, and the finale, in which Gacy is nearly absent, buries what should be its best scene. Still, I respect a serial killer drama that\u2019s this willing to eschew exploitative shock and simple answers in favor of sadness and weariness.<\/p>\n

\n\tMacmanus and director Larysa Kondracki hold back on introducing us to Gacy in the pilot as well. Instead, starting on December 11, 1978, we meet Elizabeth Piest (Marin Ireland<\/a>, TV\u2019s go-to for sadness and weariness), a suburban Chicago mother whose teenage son was supposed to meet a contractor about a job but never came home. She goes to the local police, where chief of detectives Joe Kozenczak (James Badge Dale<\/a>) tells her, \u201cThey usually show up, kids.\u201d That\u2019s not enough for Elizabeth, so Joe sends Rafael Tovar (Gabriel Luna<\/a>) to do rudimentary investigations that bring him to the house of simultaneously friendly and squirrelly Gacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSuspicion leads to interrogation. Interrogation leads to confession. Soon, the police are tearing up Gacy\u2019s home and finding a nightmarish collection of bodies; Gacy\u2019s attorney Sam Amirante (Michael Angarano) is trying desperately to get his loquacious client to shut up; prosecutor Bill Kunkle (Chris Sullivan) is fantasizing that the high-profile case that could lead to a judgeship; Elizabeth is wondering why still nobody can find her son; and Joe is beginning to poke around into the circumstances that allowed John Wayne Gacy<\/a> to kill at least 33 young men despite previous incarceration and multiple reports of shady behavior to multiple other police departments.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot to say that this is a show the entire family should gather together to watch, but Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy keeps its content somewhat muted even when digging into queasier parts of Gacy\u2019s biography, like the time he curled up with a dead body during his time working at a mortuary. One can only imagine the Monster version of the same scene. Generally, Devil in Disguise trusts the established facts of Gacy\u2019s spree, favoring a rumbling low-level suspense over action. When did we decide that serial killer stories were supposed to be wild or thrilling?<\/p>\n

\n\tEpisodes tend to follow a trifurcated structure, between the police investigation, with Gacy as a central figure; the legal maneuvering, again with Gacy as a central figure; and flashbacks, some featuring Gacy at different stages in his psychopathy (or mustache-growing) and others focused on his victims, both deceased and survivors. The 1978 portions of the storytelling are methodical and procedural, at their very best calling to mind David Fincher\u2019s work in Zodiac<\/a>. The flashbacks and spotlights on the victims are never chronological, and their placement doesn\u2019t always feel logical, but they\u2019re the emotional heart of the series.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs was the case in Hulu\u2019s The Girl from Plainville<\/a>, Macmanus is attuned to the quiet perils of teenage life. Police and the media classified Gacy\u2019s victims as male prostitutes and homosexuals, using that as an excuse to marginalize and blame them. But instead of fixating on how Gacy preyed on these kids, Macmanus examines the circumstances that made them vulnerable to be preyed upon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe crawlspace at Gacy\u2019s house, masterfully recreated by the production design team, is where the victims\u2019 journeys ended. So instead we get earlier introductions to people like petty criminal Billy Kindred (Colton Ryan), who viewed a construction job with Gacy as a chance to go legitimate, or the mother (Sprague Grayden\u2019s Bessie) who worries that her own anti-establishment protesting might cause her troubled son to slip through the cracks. Rather than viewing the insinuating and undeniably creepy Gacy as an inherent threat, Macmanus finds the tragedy in the disparate and desperate circumstances amid which Gacy might have represented an illusion of hope. As depicted here, Gacy is a parasite latched onto a failing society. It\u2019s an approach that\u2019s more interesting than the one episode that attempts to analyze Gacy\u2019s own backstory and can\u2019t dig much deeper than \u201cDaddy issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEpisodes end with news footage and still black-and-white images of the actual victims and the media coverage. If memory serves, no photograph or footage of the real Gacy is included. Each episode also closes with a call to action for a youth support network, reminding us that with or without a Gacy, the conditions surrounding alienation remain.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs played by Chernus, Gacy is a disturbing mixture of hard and soft, sometimes icy and terrifying but frequently offering the closest thing to levity in the series. Dale, Luna and Angarano play varying shades of traumatized exhaustion, each actor delivering a performance that matches and deepens a washed-out color palette drained of joy. Thanks to the episodic flashbacks, it ends up being a rather vast ensemble, with Ted Dykstra, Jake Horowitz and Augustus Prew among the actors making the most of smaller guest parts.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy jumping forward to 1994 and Gacy\u2019s \u2014 spoiler alert \u2014 execution, the finale is able to bring together many of the survivors and family members of the victims for what could almost be a one-act play meditating on the ethical and spiritual thorniness of the death penalty. It\u2019s such a good opportunity to sum up the series\u2019 themes, so it\u2019s a little disappointing that there are only a few minutes dedicated to that conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt isn\u2019t completely effective, but it\u2019s substantive and avoids sensationalizing one of the most sensational cases of the 20th century. I\u2019d call it \u201cbordering on worthwhile\u201d in a genre too oversaturated for anything to be \u201cnecessary.\u201d Some bloodthirsty audiences will call it \u201cdull.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly six full hours into Peacock\u2019s Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy, we finally see the eponymous serial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[127301,88,127302,127303,127304,127305,127306,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-227625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-devil-in-disguise-john-wayne-gacy","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-gabriel-luna","11":"tag-james-badge-dale","12":"tag-john-wayne-gacy","13":"tag-marin-ireland","14":"tag-michael-chernus","15":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}