It’s hard to imagine certain figures in history as anything
other than the embodiment of pure evil. It’s hard to imagine Hitler as a painter, or Charles Manson as a musician, but most of all, it’s hard to imagine
Jeffrey Dahmer as a normal person. That's not to say that My Friend Dahmer tries to normalize his actions, but rather find a method behind the madness. To the world at large, Dahmer was a monster;
a ruthless killer who murdered seventeen men and boys over the course of thirteen
years and committed a cavalcade of atrocities, including (but not limited to)
having sex with their corpses and eating their flesh. But to cartoonist John “Derf”
Backderf (who was at the screening I went to and gave a Q&A at the end of
the film), Dahmer was the weird kid in high school whose problems became harder
and harder to ignore, and tragically didn’t get help when he needed it the
most. His attempt to reconcile this part of his past culminated in the graphic
novel, My Friend Dahmer, and the subsequent
film adaptation.
Our story takes place in the small town of Richfield, Ohio in
the 70’s (the film was shot on location in Dahmer’s hometown, including the
house he grew up in), before the killing. But things aren’t so rosy for Jeff
(Ross Lynch). At home, he has to deal with his parents (Anne Heche and Dallas
Roberts) going through an explosive end of their marriage. At school, he’s an
awkward, lonely kid who’s constantly picked on. Alone, he collects roadkill and
dissolves them in acid to study their insides. In his head, he’s wrestling with
twisted urges that he can’t share with anyone and must cope with by himself. The
only solace Jeff finds is when his classmate Derf (Alex Wolfe) and his friends
develop a fascination with him after a bizarre outburst at school and form the
Dahmer Fan Club, but even they slowly start to realize that something is not
right with him.
Barring the fact that this is the origin story of the most
notorious serial killer in American history, all the ingredients are there for
the making of a troubled youth. But since the film practically hinges on the
audience being at least familiar with who Dahmer was, it’s more about shedding
light on how he came to be this way. It doesn’t try to justify his actions or
make us sympathize with him, but rather tries to give an understanding of how
he got from point A to point B. Neither the book of film points a finger at
anything specific (although Derf has expressed frustration with his teachers
for not seeing the obvious signs), but if the best psychologists in the world
couldn’t pinpoint the exact origin of his madness, then I don’t expect a small
indie film to have the answer. For some, this could be a source of frustration.
The choice to frame this as a coming-of-age story with dark
undertones ala Dazed and Confused meets The Virgin Suicides serve to highlight
the tragedy of it all. My Friend Dahmer
is, at its core, a character study. And as such, the plot isn’t so much a
moving narrative as it is a series of vignettes of his life and his
relationship with the people in it with little connecting tissue. Jeff manages
to secure a meeting with the Vice President while on a trip to Washington DC,
and it’s never brought up again. The Dahmer Fan Club stage a public performance
where he spazzes out and causes mayhem in a mall, but there’s no grand finale. Jeff’s
father was well-meaning and was the only adult that tried to get his son out of
his shell, but he was emotionally distant and ultimately ineffective. His
mother struggles with a host of mental health issues that hint as a possible
source of his own madness. The Fan Club are just a group of bored band nerds
looking to raise hell by sneaking him into yearbook photos and following him
around as he spazzes out in public places. But they become put off by Jeff’s
increasingly erratic behavior and question whether what they’re doing is too
mean. (Derf pointed out that the latter point was hardly the case, and Dahmer
himself even claimed this was the happiest point of his life.)
The glue that truly holds this film together, however, is
the acting. Performances are solid all around, but it’s Ross Lynch is the one
who brings the house down. From his immersion in this role as a socially awkward
teen whose stiff shuffle and thousand-yard stare hide a swarm of thoughts and
urges that he silently wrestles with, he captures the character completely. (I
never would’ve guessed that this guy got his start on the Disney Channel.) Dallas
Roberts nails the frustration of a father having to deal with both a troubled
son and a toxic breakup, and Anne Heche brings a haunting hysteria to Jeff’s
mother.
Bottom line, My Friend
Dahmer is a chilling, sobering tale of wasted adolescence. The challenge of
making a serial killer’s life before the killing must’ve been a daunting one,
and both Derf and director Marc Meyers deserve major props for their attempts
to explore this subject without sensationalizing it, and that alone makes it
one of the better true-life serial killers out there.
7/10
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