By MICHAEL BALD/ Editor for Patriot Pulse
“Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” is a gripping contradiction of a min-series. Though it tries to showcase new perspectives by those affected by the infamous serial killer, the way they handle Jeffrey Dahmer himself goes against the message they are trying to push.
This nine-part miniseries on Netflix shows the complete life of Dahmer. Though the show time jumps from different points in his life, the first five episodes mostly revolve around Dahmer’s childhood to his apartment killings in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The latter half of the series follows the trial and media obsession with him rather than the families he affected who were predominately African-American.
The amount of detail dedicated to this series is commendable. The accuracy in costume design to make up resembling the real people is impressive.
The same goes for the performances. Everyone is a powerhouse. Especially leading actor Evan Peters, who must have meticulously watched every footage of Dahmer he could because he nails everything: his walk, the pauses in his speech, facial expressions, tone of voice.
Every scene with him was nail biting, this could become another Emmy win for him.
The two main supporting actors, who also do an exceptional job, are Niecy Nash, who
plays Dahmer’s neighbor in the apartment, and Richard Jenkins, who plays Dahmer’s dad Lionel Dahmer. Both could also snag nominations come award season.
The situations in which they were placed gave them much room to be creative and they delivered on every front.
The technical aspects are top notch. However, the skills shown do play in service to a questionable script produced by Ryan Murphy, who famously produced “American Horror Story.” While in that show the point is to showcase the scares and horrific imagery, the style would sometimes seep its way into this series, making it come off very exploitative compared to what happened.
If they wanted to do an AHS style show with Dahmer as the focal point then, whatever. But the fact they tried to introduce this whole other side of the story from the victims’ and families’ perspectives goes against everything the show is trying say about media glorification of serial killers.
The first episode, which portrays the night of Dahmer’s arrest after a victim of his
manages to escape the apartment, promised this premise with exceptional direction and acting. We follow the perspective of a victim after Dahmer picks him up at a bar. We see how he reacts to the smell in the apartment. The dim yellow lighting creates an atmosphere of unease for the character, but sheer terror in the audience.
There’s also a moment when Dahmer gets a beer out of the fridge and when he
opens it, if you look quickly, you can see a head at the bottom. The brilliance in the execution was the subtly.
No music. No obvious camera hold. No jump scare.
You could miss it if you blink. But if the audience missed it, they still feel the tension created.
The exploitation or glorification of violence comes at the end of the episode when Lionel
Dahmer is called to a police station and told about what they found in the apartment. When the police tell him, we cut to slow motion shots of forensic pathologists slowly revealing body parts out of the fridge, doors, and the infamous blue barrel.
Every shot is accompanied with over-the-top creepy lighting and cheap scary stock music. The scene ends with the police leaving Lionel alone for minute as he breaks into tears over the news he’s just heard. It’s a powerful performance but it’s undermined by the footage before.
This could’ve been a disturbing moment where we just hold on Lionel’s face as he’s told
the news, just getting to see his entire demeanor change as he’s told what his son has done. But no. The audience just has to see dismembered body parts up close.
This right here is constant throughout the show. Constantly wavering between showcasing how institutions failed Dahmer’s victims and the media’s exploitation of his crimes
to portraying up close and personal how Dahmer did what he did.
Another aspect that’s at fault is how they portray Dahmer writing-wise. We are shown a great deal throughout the series, his perspective on everything happening, and while they never portray empathy towards what he is doing, they still seem to humanize the monster.
This goes against everything they are trying to say later. Either he is an irredeemable monster who society paid its attention towards rather than the victims or he’s a young man who was tragically overcome by his demons.
The filmmakers try to pull off both, but I don’t think it works. Either make a story entirely from his perspective or entirely from the people around him. It can’t be done both ways.
For those wanting a thorough account of the Jeffrey Dahmer story, this show is fantastic but the commentary on true crime exploitation in media comes off as hypocritical. If the filmmakers and Netflix actually believed what they were preaching, this series wouldn’t have come out or have been named what it ended up being.
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