Raising Jeffrey Dahmer

We have 3 cats and 2 dogs. I think we could have organized them to do a better re-enactment of Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood than this film. The movie is 100 minutes long; we made it 60 minutes--so, to be fair, I haven't even seen the whole movie. I just couldn't bear it. This looks like a film put together by a group of high school students in a movie-making class. And not even high-achieving students. The acting was awful, although I felt a great deal of pity for the actors in this film. They really never had a chance. Lots of corny flashbacks. Not even sure of the film's accuracy based on other things I've heard and read on Dahmer. I have to say...might be the worst movie I've ever seen. I can't believe this was even in the video store. Please, spare yourself! Avoid this one at all costs!

One would assume that a movie named "Raising Jeffrey Dahmer" would deal largely with his childhood. Instead, the movie begins with his arrest and deals largely with the stress of his parents face trying to deal with the media. There are flashbacks to childhood events, but they are short, stylized, and presented out of chronological order. They are more distracting and confusing than they are enlightening. The step-mother is played in a very distant, emotionless manner that makes it impossible to determine what she is going through and difficult to sympathize with her. The father spends most of the film being shown reacting to discoveries and incidents so we do not have an opportunity to get close to him either. His emotional range was too one-dimensional to get a clear picture of who he really is as a person. The movie is somewhat interesting, but it didn't live up to it's potential. I expected to see Jeffrey raised through childhood complete with all the clues and hints about how he might turn out. I expected to see a film that puts us in the place of the parents and allows us to feel the struggle between a parents unconditional love for a child and reconciling the horrible crimes committed by the child. I would have enjoyed this as a straight documentary or as a revealing, emotional docudrama. Instead, the director chose to focus on being artsy. I didn't hate this film, but I was left very disappointed.

Who'd have thought a movie about a serial killer would be boring? But this movie is. It's disjointed and dull, and less about raising Jeffrey Dahmer than his family coming to grips with his arrest. That would be OK, but even that emotional time isn't portrayed very well.

The acting isn't very good, but the script is even worse. It's difficult to sympathize with any of the characters, who are all pretty much one-dimensional: the self-questioning father, the steely stepmother and the distraught grandma. It seems impossible that any of them can feel those qualities simultaneously. There are tons of flashbacks, but they seem to come in no particular order, interspersed with comments such as, "That's it! That's when we knew!" I'm not sure if there are better movies about Jeffrey Dahmer out there, but I hope so.

Snooty, pompous, and pointless. This movie makes a very weak attempt to use art-house-style drama to represent the story of Dahmer. I actually got fooled into initially thinking that it was a documentary. The cover is somewhat misleading in this regard, and, if you make the same mistake I did, then you will be super-disappointed. The acting is poor, the film-work is poor, even the soundtrack is corny and revolting. There is nothing in this movie that is good. The only good thing that happened was when my flatmate walked in front of the TV and obscured my vision. I gave Raising Jeffrey Dahmer 1 star because I was forced to by the system. My real rating is definitely in the negatives. To the movie maker: Why oh why did you do this? To the consumer: Do NOT buy this. Spend your money on ANYTHING else.

Raising Jeffrey Dahmer is another bad seed movie. There are some out there that are just plain no good. We recently lost one with the death of Charles Manson. Dahmer who murdered and dismembered several young men during the 80s.

In trying to make Dahmer seem ordinary unfortunately they made him seem dull as well. Ditto for his family which was father, stepmother, and grandmother. When Dahmer played by Rusty Sneary is arrested the parents who are Scott Cordes and Kathy Barnett agonize over what should have they seen and what could have they done.

It's a cheapo production with a lot of dull patches. The story has been better told.