Starring: Ross Lynch, Anne Heche, Dallas Roberts, Alex Wolff, Vincent Kartheiser
Distributor: Madman Films
Runtime: 107 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2018
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Many of the audience will have some awareness of Jeffrey Dahmer, a notorious American serial killer who, in 1991, as the end of the film indicates, confessed to the murder of 17 men. There have been documentaries and some feature films about Dahmer himself and his serial killing. The danger always is the possibility of prurient curiosity from the audience being met by some sensationalism. While there is curiosity for the audience for this film, it is not sensationalist but, of course, given the foundation in fact, it is very disturbing.
The screenplay is based on a book by one of Jeffrey Dahmer school friends, Derf Backderf.
The setting is a town in Ohio, in Middle America, 1978. Dahmer is in high school, a loner. The opening sequence immediately sets a tone, Dahmer sitting by himself in the school bus, kids in the background playing 20 questions, suggesting issues of mysterious identity. Dahmer also looks out the window at a doctor who is jogging along the street, going to the back of the bus to watch him, the driver demanding that he sit down. Plenty of suggestions for audience reflection already.
So, this is a portrait of Dahmer over several months, culminating in his graduation from high school.
Once the audience sees the family, it is not difficult to realise that there could be quite some psychological problems which need attention. The mother (Anne Heche, not immediately recognisable) has mental problems, erratic behaviour, hectic and screaming one minute, loving the next. The father is much more quiet, reclusive in his laboratory, trying to cope and finding it more and more difficult, and an eventual divorce. There is a younger brother, David, presented ordinarily enough.
Dahmer has slightly stooped shoulders, walks in a kind of shuffle, mainly avoids people although he plays tennis and plays an instrument in the band. He avoids the school bullies. However, in some strange behaviour in the library, feigning and mercilessly mocking palsy and epileptic seizures, he is taken up by a group of the boys who think this is very funny and clever, continually urge him to repeat the performances, in the school corridors and, as a culmination to their fun, to behave in a berserk palsy fashion in the local Mall.
This does give some affirmation to Jeffrey, coming out of himself a little more, his father urging him to lift weights to improve his physique and helping to make friends. But Jeffrey is seen to have his own laboratory, a hut in the woods where he experiments with roadkill, saying that he is interested in bones and structure. His father, however, smashes his equipment and dismantles the hut.
The prom is coming up and Jeffrey invites, awkwardly and hesitantly, a young girl to go with him, though, at the dance, he is even more awkward and goes home.
He graduates, his mother and David going off to the grandparents because his father will be at the ceremony – and is present and gives him the gift of a car.
The film ends with sinister suggestions. Backderf, the author of the memoir, gives Jeffrey a lift in his car, noticing blood on his hands (the audience having seen Jeffrey with a knife and a dog). Jeffrey is menacing to his friend but resist the impulse. Finally, he offers lift to a shirtless hitchhiker on the road after deliberating as to what he should do – fade to black and information that the hitchhiker was never seen again and the further information about Dahmer’s confession.
The screenplay offers suggestions, cues, possibilities for the explanation of Dahmer’s psyche, impulses, killings.
Fr Peter Malone MSC is an associate of the Australian catholic office for Film & Broadcasting.
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