Portrait of killer no work of art
When filming a cinematic take on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer – who murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991 – it would be easy to go down the grisly, horror movie route.
But relatively unknown and inexperienced director Marc Meyers deserves credit for negotiating a different path with his feature on the Milwaukee Monster.
He focuses on the cannibal during his high school years as he attempts to figure out what made Dahmer into the despicable killer he became.
Meyers adapts Dahmer’s ex-schoolmate Derf Backderf’s same-titled book and Backderf’s up close and personal time spent in Dahmer’s company lends credibility to proceedings.
But while Meyers’ source material made perfect sense, his choice to fill Dahmer’s chilling shoes was more difficult to understand.
Former Disney Channel regular Ross Lynch was given the formidable task and other than a fleeting appearance in 2014’s Muppets Most Wanted, this marks his first on-screen cinematic role.
It’s a challenge the 22-year-old embraces; his young Dahmer gets under your skin without veering off into hammy, over-the-top craziness.
He’s at his best during the classroom scenes as he saunters through an existence he’s clearly not comfortable with while putting his body through hell.
Lynch’s effective and relatively restrained performance is even more pleasing given the bizarre turn delivered by Anne Heche – an actress I’ve never been a huge fan of – as Dahmer’s mother Joyce.
Backderf is played by Alex Wolff ( Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) and it’s astonishing to see how honest the novelist is in how he exploited Dahmer’s unusual behaviour; in fact, in a number of scenes Wolff is actually more disturbing than Lynch.
While Meyers shows impressive restraint, there are moments where his film feels like it’s sleepwalking and you long for something with a bit more substance to happen.
We never truly get under the skin of Dahmer which makes the horrendous turn his later life takes harder to understand.
This is also a film lacking anyone to root for as no-one emerges unscathed, or without literal or figurative blood on their hands.
Whether accurate or not, there’s also something a little generic about much of young Dahmer’s behaviour – killing animals, troubled home life, bullied at school – that comes across like a “building a serial killer 101” movie template.
The claustrophobic seventies setting convinces but the same can’t be said for all of the wigs and ill-fitting clothing worn by the cast.
Try as he might Meyers can’t deliver the definitive portrait of Dahmer; and it’s intriguing to think how this might have worked in the hands of a more experienced director.