FILM OF THE WEEK
My Friend Dahmer Cert: 15A; Now showing It is easy to assume that serial killers are born evil — but there is a time before even the most notorious become active.
Jeffrey Dahmer is one of the most infamous serial killers in history, but as a child he went to school and had friends. One of those friends, John Backderf wrote a best-selling graphic novel about the last year of high school — the last year before Dahmer crossed the line of no return. That book is now a film which seeks to show how Dahmer was. It neither particularly blames or explains — for who, after all, can ever really explain?
Marc Meyers worked from Backderf’s book to write and direct My Friend Dahmer. One of many film-makers to be interested in the story, he has proven the author’s instinct in picking him correct keeping to the spirit of the book and creating a very atmospheric sense of middle America in 1978. His choice to cast Disney star Ross Lynch as Dahmer is inspired and Lynch really conveys isolation and creepiness.
For a brief time at the end of high school Dahmer became popular with a group of friends, among them Derf (Alex Wolff ) who found his odd behaviour wacky and formed the Dahmer Fan Club.
As a younger child Dahmer had dissolved roadkill in jars of acid but as his parents’ (Anne Heche and Dallas Roberts) marriage disintegrates his father’s frustration leads him to destroy the shed in which Jeff does his experiments.
For a time the Fan Club fills the void and makes Dahmer feel like he belongs.
The film ends neatly when the distractions that held Dahmer in check end, and he changes from strange boy to monster.