Dahmer

The first time I viewed this film. I thought it was pure trash. But for some strange reason many moons later - I watched it again. And really liked it a lot. And that's why I recommend watching it the first time with an open mind. And not expecting a gorefest. Myself - being a big fan of the horror genre. Expected to see Jeffrey depicted as a homosexual lune - carvin/sexin' up guys left and right. I mean I had read about him some and knew there was more to him then this psycho. But I figured a movie about him would want to focus on the killings for shock value. Boy was I in for it. This movie doesn't focus on Jeffrey the killer. But Jeffrey the person. And really succeeds in doing so in my opinion. But rambling on - I want to leave reader's with this. If you're planning to watch this movie. Please do so with an open mind - and not expecting the stereotypical Jeffrey Dahmer. You'll be disappointed if you don't.

By the way: I want to give some praise to writer/director David Jacobson. Very talented guy imo. I'll definitely be looking into more of his projects. Jeremy Renner as well. Really nice job portraying Dahmer on screen. Good casting choice.

Based on real-life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who was active primarily in Wisconsin in the 1980s, this film focuses on a few key episodes in Dahmer's life.

If you're at all familiar with the facts about Jeffrey Dahmer--and probably a hefty percentage of people interested in the film are familiar with Dahmer to some extent--it's difficult to watch this film without strong expectations. The problem is that under those expectations, Dahmer isn't likely to be the film you want it to be. It might work better if you're unfamiliar with the background material, but on the other hand, it might be too disjointed to work in that case. You need a familiarity with Dahmer's life to piece the film together as you watch it.

That's not to say that the film is a complete failure. In fact, I gave it a 7 out of 10. Jeremy Renner, who plays Dahmer, is fantastic. Bruce Davison, as Dahmer's father, and Artel Kayaru, as Rodney, also turn in great performances. Writer/director David Jacobson chose to make the film a psychological portrait, rather than a chronological retelling of Dahmer's misdeeds, and rather than focusing on the lurid details of the crimes. After the first 20 minutes or so, the film becomes non-sequential, and links together a number of events that provide clues (as much of a clue as we can have, at least) into Dahmer's behavior. We see Dahmer interacting with his family (primarily his grandmother and father) in a peculiar, distanced way. We see him discovering and trying to come to terms with his homosexuality in a twisted way. We see his desire for intimacy. We see actions taken by the police that would be unbelievable if we didn't know that they actually happened that way, more or less. We see him constantly drinking alcohol through most of these events. This makes up the bulk of the film. In fact, we only see Dahmer kill two humans during the course of the film, and both are relatively not graphic, and relatively quick events.

All of this was intriguing to me, but I wanted the lurid details to be explored more. Dahmer was a man who conducted experiments on his victims, trying to turn some of them into lobotomized, robot-like companions. He kept vats of acid in his apartment to dispose of body parts. He had a severed head in his refrigerator. He cannibalized victims and engaged in necrophilia. To make a film about Dahmer where these things are not explored not only downplays the severity of his crimes, but it also leaves out fairly essential aspects of Dahmer's character, if this is to be a character study. I found myself regularly checking the running time, wondering how and when Jacobson was going to get to this other material before the film had to end. And for someone unfamiliar with Dahmer, they probably would spend a lot of time trying to figure out why the film keeps jumping from one event to another, frequently going back and forth with the same events.

The bottom line is that while this film is more than worthwhile as a kind of extended footnote, a much better film about Dahmer needs to be made. Let's just hope that we can get someone as gifted in the role as Renner to be in that film.

People seem really disgusted by the film, but the only thing that disgusts me are the negative reviews. This is a very well-made film that was put together on a very low budget. Films like this always have the immediate handicap of focusing not only on an evil, psychotic main character, but focusing on an evil, psychotic main character who we all know. There weren't too many complaints about "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (a great film) focusing on a psychopath, but that's because Tom Ripley is a fictional character. Like everybody, I believe that what Jeffrey Dahmer did was wrong, and I feel sorry for all the families who lost sons and other relatives due to him. But this movie was not made to portray him as a hero, nor a villain. It's meant to portray him as a person. We all know about the crimes that Dahmer committed. But we don't know about Dahmer himself. We don't what drove Dahmer to madness, and what led up to the subsequent rapes, murders and eventual cannibalism. And the movie doesn't try to shock us with gory details of these grisly occurrences, because that's not its intention. There's no use showing us what we already know.

I found this biopic deeply fascinating. I learned a lot about Dahmer that I never knew previously. I can't say I relate to him that much, other than being lonely and an only child, but that didn't stop me from seeing how he was as a human being. While watching the film, I said to myself, "How come we don't learn much about his family life?" Maybe his family life had nothing to do with choosing to be that way. Not every serial killer commits murder because he was abused as a child. From the looks of things, he had a pretty well-to-do upbringing.

What I did get a sense of was his alienation and shyness. He felt his homosexuality served as a handicap in his society. And he wasn't brilliantly sociable, so he didn't have an easy time making friends or getting guys to go out with him, or have sex with him for that matter. But his perversions took him so far that he'd walk into a gay bar and slip roofies into guys' drinks (which is shown in an extended montage), take them to the back and have sex with them as they're helpless and passed out. It's interesting to find out this can happen among homosexuals as well. There's a long history of guys slipping roofies into women's drinks to get them in the sack, so Dahmer was no different from any horny heterosexual guy, only he took it many steps further.

One thing I must criticize is the use of flashbacks. When I first watched the film, I had the impression that the whole movie was about young Jeffrey Dahmer and the story was told in a linear fashion. But after watching the featurette and watching it a second time with the commentary, I realized that the movie was bouncing back and forth from Jeffrey in his later years to Jeffrey in his earlier years. I personally didn't think slapping facial hair on him made him look much older. He still looked like he was in his twenties, so I had no hint of his aging. Once I watched it a second time, the story became much more clear to me, but others watching it for the first time might get confused as well.

I liked the use of lighting. Jeffrey's room is lit completely red, giving it almost a hell-ish appearance. And towards the end, the lighting becomes much darker, as Dahmer becomes more evil.

The performances are good all-around. Jeremy Renner does an incredible job at playing Dahmer, expressing a laundry list of emotions with his face and body language alone. I kept trying to recall where I saw him before, since his face looked very familiar, and then I checked his filmography and found out he was in "National Lampoon's Senior Trip." Of course, this movie gave him a much better opportunity at showing off his acting abilities. Talented, underrated actor Bruce Davison makes a few appearances as Dahmer's father, also doing an incredible job the 10 minutes-or-so he's on screen.

Though I found the film fascinating and thought-provoking, I still wish I could've learned a little more about what drove Dahmer to madness. The director mentioned it wasn't his intention to give backstory on Dahmer's life, and instead make it an emotional drama, but it would've made the film more interesting. But one scene that caught me completely by surprise was when young Jeffrey cringing when cutting up one of his victim's bodies and eventually bursting into tears. I'm sure his remorse decreased over the years, but I don't ever visualize a serial killer feeling shame about his victims. I saw John Liszt (sp) in an interview once and he described his methods of mutilating his victims without batting an eye. So this is not exactly the movie's cue to have the audience feel sorry for Dahmer and cry along with him, but it's enlightening to find out that had emotions as well. He was just so driven by his psychological sicknesses that his emotions couldn't hinder him.

My score: 8 (out of 10)

I was surprised at this movie. I was expecting a real exploitation flick, packed with heads in freezers, boiled skulls and necromance painted across the celluloid with a generous brush. It's nothing like that. It's a very quiet and introverted picture, focusing on the inner workings of Jeffrey Dahmer. It's very well shot, and the guy playing Jeffrey does a great job of it. The result is a lot more intense than the obvious splatterfest version would have been.

But, I must admit, I still found the movie lacking. It has tons of great characterization, but there is no narrative drive in the script. It's basically Jeffrey Dahmer taking guys back to his place and flashbacking a lot while waiting for the sedatives to kick in. It doesn't really begin, and it certainly doesn't end. As a character study, it's a fine example of how much you can flesh out your characters (obscure pun intended). As a movie, it doesn't cut it. All characters and no plot makes Jeff a dull boy....

"Dahmer" tries to tell one of the most horrific stories of recent years. But the whole story of Jeffrey Dahmer does not get told in this movie. There are some shocking moments, but most of the movie gets bogged down in flashbacks (and even flashbacks-within-flashbacks). At some points, you cannot tell if you're watching another flashback or the present moment in the story. Jeremy Renner plays the title character, with an adequately creepy air. Some of his ghastly crimes are shown, while the gore is kept to a minimum. And Dahmer's homosexuality is mentioned, but much of it is kept just off-camera, as evidenced by the montage of Jeffrey's date rape drug-fueled sodomy marathons. This movie does not try to present Jeffrey Dahmer as Dr. Hannibal Lecter. (How could anyone glamorize this murderer?) But I would have preferred some kind of analysis as to why he became a killer. The strange and tragic story of Jeffrey Dahmer left a lot of people sad and wanting answers. But this movie left me wanting satisfaction.