MY FRIEND DAHMER
Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
My Friend Dahmer is a peculiar film indeed, the kind of thing that can make you wonder what it’s target audience is. People with truly morbid curiosity, I guess? Presumably that includes me; I was interested in seeing it, after all. That said, the Regal Meridian Cinema downtown in Seattle is the single theatre in the area it’s playing in, and even there it’s not exactly selling out. This is not a story with wide appeal. Perhaps the world has had its fill of cannibal mass murderers.
Then again, maybe not. Still, I’m not even sure what there is about this movie to recommend to others, unless increasingly unsettling awkwardness counts. Certainly the performances are excellent: 21-year-old Ross Lynch plays an 18-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer, and the resemblance is uncanny. His stiff social awkwardness among peers is maybe slightly overdone, but is always thoroughly effective. And Anne Heche is inspired casting as Joyce, Jeffrey’s erratically crazy mother. How’s that for “on brand”? Jeffrey's father (Dallas Roberts) finds it increasingly difficult to control her, and also frets about Jeffrey's own apparent lack of friends.
The story is based on a 2012 graphic novel of the same name by Derf Backderf, who tells of befriending Dahmer during their senior year of high school. In the film, he’s played by Alex Wolff, although director Marc Meyers does not maintain his single point of view. Dahmer starts “spazzing out,” seemingly as a joke, and Derf and a few of his friends think it’s funny. They go so far as to create the “Dahmer Fan Club,” encouraging him to disrupt classes and the school overall in this way. It’s increasingly unclear to what extent Dahmer is in on the joke.
Meanwhile, Dahmer himself slowly reveals himself to be a little unnerving, potentially dangerous. We never see him commit any of his heinous crimes here, only living the year of his life that leads up to it. He has an excessive fascination with roadkill -- one of the first things seen onscreen in the film -- and dissolving animal carcasses in acid. At one point we see him taking a dog into the woods, and that sight alone is effectively frightening.
It’s widely known that Dahmer was gay, and it’s strange how that is only barely suggested in this movie. But maybe it was something Derf, as the original teller of this story, never quite realized. Or maybe Meyers doesn’t want to come across as over-focusing on it. The shifting nature of identity politics is one thing; the straightforward truth of a matter is another.
Either way, My Friend Dahmer is a uniquely creepy movie, increasingly so as it goes along with its subject slowly awakening to his own monstrous impulses. It is thus particularly memorable and effective, if you’re into that sort of thing.
One of these things is not like the other.
Overall: B+