Awkward teenager Jeffrey Dahmer (Ross Lynch) is obsessed with macabre subjects as he has a fascination with finding roadkill and dissolving it in acid to collect the bones. Jeffrey's father Lionel (Dallas Roberts) is worried about Jeffrey and following accumulated pent-up stress from dealing with his mentally ill wife/Jeffrey's mother Joyce (Anne Heche) dismantles Jeffrey's shed and tells him to be more active and find a more sociable activity. Not able to find one, Jeffrey eventually adopts the identity of class clowning with his trademark of faking symptoms of epileptic seizures and cerebral palsy soon earning him a small circle of friends who self-describe as Jeffrey's "fan club" lead by John "Derf" Backderf (Nat Wolff). While Jeffrey does seemingly have a starting point for social relationships, his deteriorating home life with his mother's worsening mental illness and parents' marriage combined with Jeffrey's struggles with his own homosexuality and untreated psychoses leads to him drifting down a path of tragedy.
My Friend Dahmer is a 2017 adaptation of the 2012 biographical graphic novel of the same name written by Cartoonist John Backderf and based on his actual relationship with Jeffrey Dahmer when the two attended middle school and high school together. Jeffrey Dahmer is no stranger to film's depicting his life, including the direct-to-video The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer which began production in secret a month before Dahmer had even been convicted and sentenced, or the 2002 film Dahmer which deservedly earned praise for Jeremy Renner's portrayal of the titular figure, but I personally felt suffered from a lack of focus despite being much more polished than The Secret Life. My Friend Dahmer finally gives us a movie that not only has the acting needed for this story, but also an emotional core and focus by looking at the tragedy that helped to bring about Dahmer as we know him.
Ross Lynch had previously been known by audiences for starring in the Disney Channel tween sitcom Austin & Ally and it's a great against type performance from Lynch. Not only does he tap into the awkwardness and isolation you'd expect from a teenaged Dahmer, but he also taps into the humor and class clowning that Dahmer adopted in high school as well as the emotional inner turmoil coming from his discovering his homosexuality. A movie like My Friend Dahmer is an inherently uphill battle because it is tasked with asking the audience to empathize with a future serial killer, but the movie does do that by giving us a look at the circumstances that allowed Dahmer to become how he was. Dallas Roberts plays Dahmer's father Lionel and he's very much a stabilizing force in Dahmer's life, but as time goes on and Joyce's mental state continues to deteriorate Lionel simply doesn't have the energy or wherewithal to get Dahmer the attention and help he needs which leads to Dahmer very much left to his own to deal with issues of violent fantasies and homosexual attraction becoming tangled and intwined. The tragedy is made all the more sad as we do see Jeffrey have fun with his small circle of friends but there's always that lingering thought that "this can't last" which undercuts a lot of their shenanigans and pranks with a tragic undercurrent coloring these moments. My Friend Dahmer doesn't let Dahmer off the hook by any stretch as his attraction to death and violence is present throughout the film, but it does ask the audience to understand Dahmer wasn't a monster, but he was sick with an illness that was left to fester until it metastasized into the horror story we now know all too well.
While the bar may be incredibly low for Jeffrey Dahmer media, My Friend Dahmer is undeniably the best film to tackle him as a subject. The movie tries to approach Dahmer on a human level and understand what was behind him and to that end I think the movie does give us a thorough, detailed, and thoughtful look at this story without going into sensationalism or exploitation.
My Friend Dahmer is a 2017 adaptation of the 2012 biographical graphic novel of the same name written by Cartoonist John Backderf and based on his actual relationship with Jeffrey Dahmer when the two attended middle school and high school together. Jeffrey Dahmer is no stranger to film's depicting his life, including the direct-to-video The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer which began production in secret a month before Dahmer had even been convicted and sentenced, or the 2002 film Dahmer which deservedly earned praise for Jeremy Renner's portrayal of the titular figure, but I personally felt suffered from a lack of focus despite being much more polished than The Secret Life. My Friend Dahmer finally gives us a movie that not only has the acting needed for this story, but also an emotional core and focus by looking at the tragedy that helped to bring about Dahmer as we know him.
Ross Lynch had previously been known by audiences for starring in the Disney Channel tween sitcom Austin & Ally and it's a great against type performance from Lynch. Not only does he tap into the awkwardness and isolation you'd expect from a teenaged Dahmer, but he also taps into the humor and class clowning that Dahmer adopted in high school as well as the emotional inner turmoil coming from his discovering his homosexuality. A movie like My Friend Dahmer is an inherently uphill battle because it is tasked with asking the audience to empathize with a future serial killer, but the movie does do that by giving us a look at the circumstances that allowed Dahmer to become how he was. Dallas Roberts plays Dahmer's father Lionel and he's very much a stabilizing force in Dahmer's life, but as time goes on and Joyce's mental state continues to deteriorate Lionel simply doesn't have the energy or wherewithal to get Dahmer the attention and help he needs which leads to Dahmer very much left to his own to deal with issues of violent fantasies and homosexual attraction becoming tangled and intwined. The tragedy is made all the more sad as we do see Jeffrey have fun with his small circle of friends but there's always that lingering thought that "this can't last" which undercuts a lot of their shenanigans and pranks with a tragic undercurrent coloring these moments. My Friend Dahmer doesn't let Dahmer off the hook by any stretch as his attraction to death and violence is present throughout the film, but it does ask the audience to understand Dahmer wasn't a monster, but he was sick with an illness that was left to fester until it metastasized into the horror story we now know all too well.
While the bar may be incredibly low for Jeffrey Dahmer media, My Friend Dahmer is undeniably the best film to tackle him as a subject. The movie tries to approach Dahmer on a human level and understand what was behind him and to that end I think the movie does give us a thorough, detailed, and thoughtful look at this story without going into sensationalism or exploitation.