Movie Review: My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Marc Meyers.

Written by: Marc Meyers based on the book by Derf Backderf.

Starring: Ross Lynch (Jeffrey Dahmer), Alex Wolff (John "Derf" Backderf), Anne Heche (Joyce Dahmer), Dallas Roberts (Lionel Dahmer), Vincent Kartheiser (Dr. Matthews), Tommy Nelson (Neil), Harrison Holzer (Mike).

 

As almost any film about Jeffrey Dahmer would have to be, My Friend Dahmer is not an easy movie to watch. This is a movie that ends with Dahmer still at the age of 18 – a few weeks after high school ended - his first victim just getting into his car. He would claim 16 more victims in the next 12 years, before he was arrested – his crimes, because of their brutality, and because they involved cannibalism, and perhaps because they involved homosexuality (something that may allowed them to go undetected, as the police didn’t seem to care much about that community in the 1980s). There is not a lot of violence in My Friend Dahmer – he does some icky things with roadkill, but it’s not graphic, and he kills a fish, but again, it’s not really graphic. The film is hard to watch mainly because we in the audience know just how deeply disturbed this teenager is – and no one else in the film seems to notice. They think he’s weird or strange, but they mainly ignore him – so lost in their own worlds, and own problems to notice this kid. You could barely call him an outcast at school – he was more like a ghost no one really noticed. The film is mainly about his senior year in high school – the brief friendship he had with another student, who years later would go on to make a graphic novel about that time, that would be adapted into this movie.

 

Ross Lynch (probably in an effort to distance himself from his Disney show Austin & Ally) plays Dahmer as a lanky, silent, unknowable kid. If he’s not being picked on in school, no one notices him as he silently plods down the hallways at school, not unlike Frankenstein. At home, his parents don’t have much more time for him. His mother, Joyce (Anne Heche), clearly has a mental illness herself, and his downtrodden father Lionel (Dallas Roberts) is exhausted from dealing with her, and his job. He is the only one who realizes something isn’t quite right about Jeffrey, but just thinks its shyness – not anything more than that. Perhaps in a desperate, last ditch effort for some sort of attention, Dahmer starts acting out at school – throwing “fits” – acting like he’s having seizures, or just yelping and making noise. This draws the attention of Derf (Alex Wolff) and his friends – who take Dahmer as their “mascot”. They think he’s hilarious – only gradually realizing he’s more damaged than they thought. Then, it’s not so funny.

 

The movie, smartly, doesn’t make the case that any of these things are the reason why Dahmer became the serial killer he would become – although it does make the case that it didn’t really help. Dahmer is suffering from whatever he would always suffer from at the outset of the movie, and while it gets worse throughout the film – as does his burgeoning alcoholism – it’s not really the reason any of this happens. The movie drops in some hints and reference from those of us who know more of the details about what Dahmer would do (like the scene where Dallas Roberts, in a sad attempt to bond with his son, gives him the barbells he will use to kill his first victim).

 

Ross is very good as Dahmer – even if the performance is a little one note by design. Dahmer, like all psychopaths, lack the ability to feel empathy or sympathy, or really much of anything – and here at least, he hasn’t really learned how to fake it. He is hardly a charming psychopath – everyone thinks he’s weird – but he flat and emotionless more than anything. Wolff is quite good as Derf as well – a typical, idiot teenager who thinks stupid, and to be honest downright mean and cruel, things are funny, without registering them as that way. A turning point for him may well a scene at the mall – where he has taken up a collection to get Jeffrey to “Do a Dahmer” – and he takes it so far that all of a sudden it doesn’t seem to so funny anymore. If you think you’re laughing with someone, and not at them, make sure they’re laughing too.

 

More than anything, My Friend Dahmer is a sad movie. The production design captures the depressing side of suburban 1970s – full of dull browns and faded colors. It presents a world in which no one really notices a kid who is clearly damaged – except for the other kids, who cannot put into words what is bothering them, so instead, they simply walk away.