Review of My Friend Dahmer (2017) by Jluis_001 — 08 Feb 2018

When I see a movie that deals with this kind of stories, most of the time I wonder how necessary it is to tell the beginnings of a true serial killer, regardless of whether his life was tragic, the result does not change his nature at all, after all the crimes have already been committed and although sometimes it can be fascinating because of the darkness in which these people lived, sometimes it's not completely functional.

My Friend Dahmer balances between the quality of an interesting portrait about a serial killer and at the same time falls into several of the clichés already seen in this kind of stories, after all we are seeing the calm before the madness and the glimpses of its subject's damaged psyche is just that, glimpses to make clear that what this person was doing to dead animals later he would be doing it with human beings.

My Friend Dahmer is the adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name, created by John Backderf, who based it on his own experiences with Dahmer when they studied together in high school and that's the whole focus of the film, it's the dramatization of the personal life that killer had before exploding.

The film is certainly humanizing and it also hints that Dahmer could have followed a different life from having been able to express his genuine sexual feelings or sexual orientation I'm not sure of how to say it, but this is where the film stagnates because obviously Dahmer is a real murderer, but speaking in film terms, it seems that we are watching another Norman Bates, a man who ended up trapped and everything else repels him and although the line that follows the film never fades, it doesn't achieve a true crucial or definitive moment to cross the threshold of the basics.

It's worth it because the subject is interesting and the film has good quality. It's not memorable and there are better films on the same subject but the film is far from a waste of time, so I can recommend it.