My Friend Dahmer (15.)
Directed by Marc Meyers.
Starring Ross Lynch, Alex Wolff, Tommy Nelson, Dallas Roberts, Harrison Holzer and Anne Heche. 106 mins
Coming soon: Pennyworth, a ten-part TV series relating the early life of Alfred, prior to his employment as Bruce Wayne's butler. Smallville/ Gotham/ Solo, it's not just the big names who have their early pre-fame days riffled through for titbits of entertainment: now even serial killers get to have their origins story put up on screen.
Among the bewildering infinity war of American serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer ranks as perhaps a Batman or Superman; one of those that everybody knows. A kind of US equivalent of Dennis Nilsen, he was a loner who'd lure men back to his house to be raped, strangled and dismembered, and then their body parts preserved. (Necrophilia and cannibalism might also feature, depending on mood.) Here we see the young Dahmer at high school, collecting up roadkill, tending his pet cemetery of preserved animal carcasses, obsessing over a jogger on a countryside route and drinking heavily while his parents go through a messy divorce.
The chilling part is not when he is a creepy loner, but when he becomes accepted. After Dahmer does a spazzing session – pretending to have cerebral palsy and having an epileptic fit – a group of lads, led by Backderf (Wolff) decide that he could be some kind of comic genius and take him into their group. Through his demeaning Jackass-style antics he gains a measure of acceptance. This view of humour as a containment measure, a way of channelling all society's dark undercurrents is genuinely disturbing.
The film is based on a graphic novel by the real-life Backderf and the posters make it look like something by Daniel Clowes or Charles Burns and they are clear inspirations. It's generally naturalistic but with little exaggerations. Lynch's Dahmer has hunched shoulders and dangled lifeless arms, like a shirt on a small hanger. It's a suburban caricature, not played for laughs.
For what it is, it is very well made and impressive, but what is it? I don't think we get any real insight into what made him a serial killer, or even what made him stand out as a celebrity serial killer, rising beyond all your humdrum psychos, news of whose capture barely makes it beyond the local papers. Ultimately it's yet another American high school tale of jocks and wedgies and bullying and lonely outsiders: one of those portraits that make the US educational system seem so thoroughly depraved and sadistic you wonder why there aren't more shootings.
Directed by Marc Meyers.
Starring Ross Lynch, Alex Wolff, Tommy Nelson, Dallas Roberts, Harrison Holzer and Anne Heche. 106 mins
Coming soon: Pennyworth, a ten-part TV series relating the early life of Alfred, prior to his employment as Bruce Wayne's butler. Smallville/ Gotham/ Solo, it's not just the big names who have their early pre-fame days riffled through for titbits of entertainment: now even serial killers get to have their origins story put up on screen.
Among the bewildering infinity war of American serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer ranks as perhaps a Batman or Superman; one of those that everybody knows. A kind of US equivalent of Dennis Nilsen, he was a loner who'd lure men back to his house to be raped, strangled and dismembered, and then their body parts preserved. (Necrophilia and cannibalism might also feature, depending on mood.) Here we see the young Dahmer at high school, collecting up roadkill, tending his pet cemetery of preserved animal carcasses, obsessing over a jogger on a countryside route and drinking heavily while his parents go through a messy divorce.
The chilling part is not when he is a creepy loner, but when he becomes accepted. After Dahmer does a spazzing session – pretending to have cerebral palsy and having an epileptic fit – a group of lads, led by Backderf (Wolff) decide that he could be some kind of comic genius and take him into their group. Through his demeaning Jackass-style antics he gains a measure of acceptance. This view of humour as a containment measure, a way of channelling all society's dark undercurrents is genuinely disturbing.
The film is based on a graphic novel by the real-life Backderf and the posters make it look like something by Daniel Clowes or Charles Burns and they are clear inspirations. It's generally naturalistic but with little exaggerations. Lynch's Dahmer has hunched shoulders and dangled lifeless arms, like a shirt on a small hanger. It's a suburban caricature, not played for laughs.
For what it is, it is very well made and impressive, but what is it? I don't think we get any real insight into what made him a serial killer, or even what made him stand out as a celebrity serial killer, rising beyond all your humdrum psychos, news of whose capture barely makes it beyond the local papers. Ultimately it's yet another American high school tale of jocks and wedgies and bullying and lonely outsiders: one of those portraits that make the US educational system seem so thoroughly depraved and sadistic you wonder why there aren't more shootings.
