![]() Faced with this realisation, much of our current serial-killer fare has cast realism aside to embrace the glamour. It doesn’t matter if you portray them as damaged souls or psychopaths you’re still adding to the legend. ![]() Instead, it lays out the warning signs that all was not right with the teenage Jeffrey Dahmer: his unstable parents, his repressed sexuality, his high-school victimisation, his unwholesome interest in anatomy.Īnd yet, by its very existence, the movie can’t help but glamorise its subject, who went on to variously rape, murder, dismember, violate and cannibalise his 17 male victims. If you would like to see more about Dahmer, you can rent David Jacobson’s 2002 movie “Dahmer,” a low key look at the serial killer’s later years.My Friend Dahmer is about as unglamorous a serial-killer movie as you could hope for: it doesn’t even feature any murders (not of humans, at least). In this regard and in its description of the idiocy that poses as student seriousness, we get a fascinating picture of how if you want to understand a killer, look to how he acted while in high school. This is strictly a movie about high-school days, or daze, about how his lack of acceptance, his treatment at the hands of his flibbertigibbet mother and his milquetoast father may have contribute to what could at the same time an inherited propensity to violence. We don’t know whether he went through with the plan, nor do we see him actually killing anyone else. We see a few examples of his dealing with roadkill, and in one tense scene, he takes a large dog into the woods and, holding the dog by the collar, produces a knife aimed at the animals’ neck. In a father-son conference, Lionel tells the boy that he should be outside making friends instead, noting that he himself had few friends when he was Jeffrey’s age and hates that side of the boy that reminds the dad of himself. His mother, Joyce Dahmer (Anne Heche) was in and out of mental hospitals, and his father, Lionel Dahmer (Ross Lynch), a chemist, was taken back by his son’s use of a spare outside room to dissect roadkill and to pour acid on them not necessarily to see what’s inside but out of pure sadism. His relationship with his parents could be taken as a sign that his schizoid personality was caused by genetics or environment, you pick ‘em. He is so self-conscious and down on himself that when he asks a freshman girl to the prom, his pitch is that she would be seen by upperclassmen, who might take an interest in her during the next few years. He is not only handsome but looks remarkably like the real Dahmer (see the extensive Wikipedia article with his picture), but since he rarely smiles, his face frozen, he cannot attract the fair sex. The title character is played by Ross Lynch, a star of Disney movies like the TV series Austin and Ally, about a songwriter and performer, with Lynch in the role of the non-conforming Austin. He is intelligent enough to know that a trio of friends, particularly Derf (Alex Wolff), hang out with him not because they really like him as an equal but rather to bully him by exhorting the young man behind the big aviator glasses to perform his clown act. His shtick is to spazz out, first in the school hallway, twitching compulsively and lying on the ground shaking, gaining the attention of the young people changing classes. To a great extent, “My Friend Dahmer” is about a teenager looking for love in his small-town Ohio high school and finding what passes loosely for acceptance can be gained by acting as the class clown. Marc Meyers, who wrote and directs the movie adapting from a graphic novel by John Backderf, has also contributed “Approaching Union Square,” about thirty-something people looking for love in the big city. “My Friend Dahmer” doesn’t take us to the 1991 trial, and in fact focuses on just one year of his youth when he was a senior in high school, telling his friends and even Vice President Mondale whom he met on a school trip to Washington, that he was intent on majoring, ironically, in the life science. he planned the crimes and was aware that killing was punishable. At his trial the prosecution argued that he was legally sane, i.e. Prospective bio major Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed seventeen young men, strangling them, drilling holes in their brains and pouring acid into them, having sex with some of the cadavers, beheading some and putting their heads in the freezer, was clearly psychotic. After all not all prospective bio majors spend the best years of their lives killing people. Next time you hear an adolescent say that he intends to major in biology, should you be frightened? Probably not. Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 10/15/17 ![]() Written by: Marc Meyers, adapted from John Backderf’s graphic novelĬast: Ross Lynch, Anne Heche, Dallas Roberts, Alex Wolff, Tommy Nelson, Vincent Kartheiser, Miles Robbins ![]()
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