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| The film's graphic novel origin is evident on this busy poster for Marc Meyers' My Friend Dahmer |
Jeffrey Dahmer has a mother, who is crazy, and a father, who is miserable and worried about his son. And then the adolescent also has a strange hobby; he picks up and dissolves roadkill as a pastime in his lonely high school life.
My Friend Dahmer is written and directed by great American filmmaker Marc Meyers (Approaching Union Square (2006)), adapting the same-titled 2012 graphic novel by Derf Backderf (Punk Rock & Trailer Parks (2010)), who in it recounts his personal experience of befriending the later legendary serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in high school in Ohio in the 1970s.
My Friend Dahmer is a very positive surprise and far superior to Dahmer (2002), the preceding major - though similarly independent and low-budgeted - film based on the gruesome killer also known as 'the Milwaukee Cannibal'. Derf's basis creation serves as an original angle on the familiar serial killer territory, namely, how does a boy grow up to become such a monster? In this respect the film lives up to both of the expectations that one could reasonable have for it: 1. It gives insight into the specific case of Dahmer. 2. It gives indications of where his later macabre murderous preferences may have come from, (biological fascinations and deep-seated alienation coupled with sexual frustrations.)
Still there is a chasm between the young fella we meet here, - Ross Lynch (Cleo (2015)) is excellent in the part, - and the horrendous crimes that we know he is going to commit. It is part of the film's sombre mission to lay this before us as our job to try to make sense of. Meyers chooses to be restrained in the use of gore, instead in some cases indicating distressing tendencies using dialog, behavior and animals.
My Friend Dahmer is probably the creepiest film in years, and it isn't one that's easy to wash off your mind after you've seen it. Additionally it has tremendous performances from Anne Heche (Cedar Rapids (2011)) as Dahmer's deeply self-involved mother, Dallas Roberts (Mayhem (2017)) as his father and Alex Wolff (My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)) as his phony friend, SPOILER who in the film's only nearly terror-inducing scene towards the end perhaps saves his own skin by withdrawing from his spazzed out 'friend' Dahmer.
Some may argue that not much happens in this film, but it is made for those already familiar with Dahmer and interested in serial killers, and for this group My Friend Dahmer is deeply, deeply unsettling, a dark independent movie gem.
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Cost: 1.5-2 mil. $
Box office: 1.4 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned in the vicinity of 0.8 times its cost)
[My Friend Dahmer premiered 21 April (Tribeca Film Festival) and runs 107 minutes. Meyers' script was on the 2014 Black List. Shooting took place in Ohio, including Cleveland, from August - September 2016. Scenes of Dahmer's home life were shot in his actual childhood home. The film opened #49 to a 35k $ first weekend in 4 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #22 and in 110 theaters (different weeks), grossing 1.3 mil. $ (92.9 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 50k $ (3.6 %) and Australia with 24k $ (1.7 %). Meyers returned with We Summon the Darkness (2019). Lynch returned in R5: If (2017, music video) and R5: Hurts Good (2017, music video) and theatrically in Status Update (2018); Heche in Armed Response (2017); Dallas Roberts (Dallas Buyers Club (2013)) in American Crime (2017, TV-series), FBI (2018, TV-series)) and theatrically in Motherless Brooklyn (2019); and Wolff in Red Oaks (2017, TV-series) and theatrically in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017). My Friend Dahmer is certified fresh at 86 % with a 7.08/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of My Friend Dahmer?
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