As we close to the ultimate week of October, Watch With Us is worked up to observe some streaming content material to get us prepped for Halloween.
And what’s higher than some real-life horror? There’s one drama collection specifically that we expect you need to squeeze in earlier than the month’s finish.
Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy is a brand new present on Peacock concerning the titular serial killer. Starring Severance’s Michael Chernus as Gacy, the present depicts the notorious assassin’s double life as a revered group member and bloodthirsty killer.
It’s one of many scariest exhibits of 2025. Right here’s why that you must watch it proper now.
This ‘Satan’ Is Too Horrible to Be Actual — However He Is
Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy facilities on one of the notorious serial killers of all time, and but, being reminded of precisely what he did nonetheless feels unbelievable. Between the years of 1972 and 1978, Gacy killed at the very least thirty-three younger males and boys within the Norwood Park Township suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He carried out as a clown and was lively in his group, often serving to his neighbors with odd jobs and duties. It was the proper cowl for his wicked actions.
Many of the murders he dedicated occurred in his residence, and most of his victims had been buried underneath his crawlspace. Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy depicts this double life that Gacy led, going unnoticed and unsuspected for thus lengthy, along with the police investigation that led to his seize and the impact on his victims and their households.
‘Satan in Disguise’ Does a Nice Job Specializing in the Victims
Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy has been praised specifically for its portrayal of Gacy’s victims and the grief and trauma skilled by their associates and acquainted. That is in sharp distinction with one other true crime drama centered on a well-known serial killer: Monster: The Ed Gein Story, which acquired ample criticism for its perceived exploitation and sensationalizing of Gein’s crimes along with queasily sympathizing with him.
On the opposite aspect of the coin, Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy makes the psychological trauma brought on by Gacy’s crimes all too actual. The collection does an excellent job at specializing in the true lives lived by Gacy’s victims fairly than merely indulging of their grotesque deaths. Moreover, it showcases how their murders affected everybody of their orbit and the ache that they suffered. As an alternative of lingering on the horror of the killings depicted, the present is as a substitute extra targeted on how Gacy was in a position to get away with them, how he embedded himself inside this unsuspecting group, cozied as much as the police, and the way he lured his victims. Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy needs us to really feel compassion as a substitute of a way of voyeurism.
It Exhibits How Gacy Acquired Away With His Crimes For So Lengthy
Together with portray a extra empathetic portrait of a serial killer’s victims than different true crime dramas are wont to do, Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy additionally serves as a profitable indictment of the biases and techniques put in place that allowed Gacy to elude justice for so long as he did. For one, the collection portrays the Chicago Police Division as each inept and ignorant, often ignoring pleas for assist from household as a result of the sufferer was homosexual or had a felony file.
Actor Jack Merrill has some concepts about why he survived a harrowing encounter with serial killer John Wayne Gacy. In his one-man present The Save, a efficiency of which was attended by Us Weekly on Friday, January 17, Merrill, 65, says he was “kidnapped and raped by John Wayne Gacy” in Chicago when he was […]
The present is express in its depiction of how homophobia performed an enormous hand in letting Gacy get away along with his crimes, along with being a revered white enterprise proprietor. It additionally exhibits the ways in which individuals concerned within the case profited from it: legal professionals bought wealthy, cops bought second careers as public figures, but the households of the victims stay with the ache for the remainder of their lives. Finally, Satan in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy is an extremely refreshing tackle the serial killer true crime collection, providing extra than simply lurid particulars and gory homicide however the emotional penalties of it, too.
