In My Friend Dahmer, writer-director Marc Meyers offers a compelling character study of a disturbed young man who would later become one of America’s most notorious serial killers. Based on John “Derf” Backderf’s best selling graphic novel of the same name, the film builds a vivid image of the artist’s teenage years growing up in the same Ohio neighbourhood as Jeffrey Dahmer, and of his fleeting friendship with the would-be killer in their senior high school year.
Young Jeffrey Dahmer (played by former Disney teen star Ross Lynch) is finding it hard to fit in at school. Shunned by his peers who find him more than a little odd, the young man has taken to spending his spare time, away from a turbulent atmosphere at home, in a makeshift laboratory experimenting on roadkill to feed his morbid fascination with death. When he is adopted by Derf (played by Jewish actor Alex Wolff) and a small group of cool and fiercely talented misfits who dub themselves the Dahmer Fan Club, the young man is increasingly encouraged by his new friends to act out in public by faking seizures and pretending to have a mental disability, which soon turns him into a legendary figure at school.
Meyers expertly depicts Dahmer’s early sexual attraction to other men through his near-pathological obsession with a handsome jogger (played by Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser) in an episode which see the young man increasingly consumed by an unbridled anger when the jogger remains oblivious to his young admirer’s clumsy advances. Meyers also approaches Dahmer’s home-life with a great deal of diligence, as he presents his mother Joyce (Anne Heche) as a mentally unstable fantasist who is barely aware of what is going on around her, and his father Lionel (Dallas Roberts) as a man trying his best to second-guess what motivates his son.
Lynch, who bears more than a fleeting resemblance to a young Dahmer, puts in a respectable turn as the disturbed young man with an impressive physical performance which is a far cry from his usual Disney heart-throb roles. For his part, Alex Wolff offers the young Backderf as a serious, studious and at times calculating teenager who, with time, will come to regret his treatment of Dahmer.
Refusing to sugarcoat the memories of his relationship with a young Dahmer, Backderf should certainly be commended on an honest account which doesn’t necessarily paint him in the best of lights. Furthermore, the film is able to stay away from humanising Dahmer’s acts all the while attempting to give an honest portrayal of what drives someone to commit such atrocities. Overall, My Friend Dahmer presents a compelling and suspenseful storyline which is further elevated by the brilliance of its young cast and the assured hand of its director.
