The Netflix docuseries “Night Stalker” has been criticized as being too much for viewers. If it is then we have sanitized the real horror of Richard Ramirez’s crimes to the point that we expect no longer to be uncomfortable when dealing them.

Richard Ramirez was a monster. He was rapist, a child molester and a murder among other things.

This morning, I finished the series. It wasn’t too much. Or maybe I am far more twisted than I thought. But I think the reality of the situation is a little more complex. True crime has become a genre where people expect a certain level of fear and revulsion, but only a enough to be entertained. We want horror to be a fun sort of fright. It is ok for a horror movie to be gory, but not a documentary about a serial killer?

Now, before I go any further, I am also a lover of most things spooky and creepy so my level of gory may be different from others.

Still, I don’t think I am off base when I say that maybe if we understood more about the horrors of men and women like Ramirez that maybe we would fetishize these killers. When Richard Ramirez was being taking to jail, a woman climbed up on the top of a fan and flash him. That’s right, a man who killed thirteen people had groupies upon his arrest.

We focus so much on the killers and their motivations that we forget about the victims including the communities that they terrorized.

So, no, in my opinion the series didn’t go too far. It talked more about the victims and the effects of the investigation on the men and women hunting the Ramirez than it showed gore. Yes, there are crime scene photos. There are also the voices of Ramirez’s victims defiant; some alive, some speaking through their surviving family members. Their humanity is brought forth in this documentary.

The documentary does take advantage of the material it had available, including crime scene photos, interviews and mood music. Some attention needs to be paid to the score. It is ominous and atmospheric tone was composed by Brooke and Will Blair. The brothers have been working since the mid-2000’s and have composed over 50 scores.

This is less a documentary about Ramirez and more a documentary about the people that hunted him and the people that survived him.