My Friend Dahmer movie review (2017)
It's that teenage self that occupies Marc Meyers' excellent and disturbing “My Friend Dahmer,” based on the graphic novel by cartoonist/artist John Beckderf, who knew Dahmer as a kid. There have been many different films (not to mention books and articles) about Dahmer such as “The Dahmer Files,” an intriguing, laconic documentary about his arrest, and David Jacobsen's “Dahmer,” which goes back through his history, eventually arriving at his first murder, the strangulation of Steven Hicks in 1978. “My Friend Dahmer” ends just before Hicks' murder, trying to get a fix on the 18-year-old who decided to take a stranger to his parents' abandoned house. The movie shies away from easy psychoanalysis of the murderer, choosing instead to let the audience draw their own conclusions. The movie thankfully doesn't try to make it seem as though bullying, alcoholism, his parents’ divorce, his burgeoning homosexuality, or even a cocktail of the above, were responsible for his actions. He may have been mentally ill but he rejected help and chose violence and anti-social behavior at every turn.
When we meet Jeffrey Dahmer (Ross Lynch), he's just north of being a complete outcast at school. He quietly hates his only friend Oliver (Jack DeVillers) and won't stand up for him when bullies attack, because if they're picking on someone else, that means they'll leave the quiet, roadkill-collecting Dahmer alone. His parents (Anne Heche & Dallas Roberts) fight so often that their eventual separation feels like a blessing. A chance encounter during class with the young John Beckderf (Alex Wolff) sets the tone for his last year of high school. ‘Derf’ and his close circle of friends admire Dahmer's fearless disruptions of social norms. He pretends to have fits of mentally disturbed behavior in class and in public places, a performance the kids dub "doing a Dahmer," and so they make him their 'mascot' and base at least a semester of practical jokes around his willingness to degrade himself for laughs. As Dahmer strains harder and harder for laughs and approval that don't manifest, he starts drinking heavily, while Derf and his crew grow a conscience about their treatment of their friend, whom they slowly realize is more disturbed than they imagined. Of course, they didn't get a first-hand look at his mother's degrading mental state, his habit of killing and chemically skinning animals, or his fixation on a hunky neighbor (Vincent Kartheiser). It turns out the last thing Dahmer wants from them is an apology or pity. What he wants is to hurt someone, and it grows increasingly clear it doesn't matter who that turns out to be.
Beyond every odd gesture is the knowledge that this unhinged hulking teen will start killing when the curtain falls on this chapter of his life. The film doesn't forecast his crimes, refusing to turn chance into clues. There's a bit of knowing queasiness when his father buys him the weights he'll later use to kill Steven Hicks, but the film doesn't show the crime, so it doesn't register as anything other than tragic coincidence for those in the know. Meyers is more interested in rendering the environment and deteriorating stability of a lost kid. The saturated colors (which are beautiful even when just a plethora of ‘70s browns and beiges) fill every room with portent and a beauty that seems purposely incongruous. There's a composition near the beginning of the film when Dahmer tries and fails to impress two classmates in his shed full of jarred animal remains that's both haunting and grammatically impressive. The approaching moonlight has turned the forest deep, almost neon green while the orange light (complete with Tobe Hooper lens flare) of the exposed halogen bulb hanging from the roof of the shack bisects the frame, showing clearly the natural darkness Dahmer refuses to acknowledge, as well as shrouding him in silhouette in a dark wooden cabin like a malevolent boogie man figure. For a few seconds the movie looks like it's about to turn into “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” but naturally life is never that easy to determine and the film never makes it that easy to situate yourself in Dahmer's story. He could have chosen to talk about his problems at any point and this would have been a very different story.
