DAHMER (2002) It's gay fucking necro sexy Disaster movies were hip for a while, a whole bunch of killer-animal movies got made in the last few years...well, this latest string of movies are biopics about real-life serial killers. The difference is, these are all coming from the same producers - it's not just hip, it's a project. It seems like an extremely tacky idea, and for sure, the Ted Bundy movie did little to convince me otherwise. This one is way, way better - easily one of the best of its kind I've seen. I never reviewed Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, but I did see it and didn't like it. It helps, when watching a biopic, that its subject at least evokes something evident in people you know. I didn't know anybody like Henry. I did not understand him when the movie was over; he just seemed like a vile, cruel person without much going on to make him interesting beyond that. This, to me, is not disturbing; like most of you, I don't have too tough of a time feeling morally superior to serial killers, and I got nothing out of that movie which asked me to see any of myself - or, at least, people I know - in its subject. To that end, I think Dahmer is a braver movie. It arguably paints a pretty sympathetic picture of Dahmer, as an extremely lonely person unable or unwilling to forge relationships with anybody around him. His parents love him and are a little more accepting of his apparent homosexuality than he'd anticipated, but even his father (played by Bruce Davison) can't reach him, and it doesn't seem like he wants to be reached. Dahmer can't or won't forge sincere relationships with other people - fucked-up as its subject matter is, this movie is probably the most saddening portrayal of loneliness (which, as usual, is self-imposed) I've seen. Yeah, I felt badly for this Jeffrey. Sure, I can't relate the gay necrophilia, or the cannibalism (actually there isn't any cannibalism in this movie) or the serial killing or the gay sex zombies or all the gay in general...but aside from all that, I saw a more than a bit of myself and some people I know in Jeffrey. Jeremy Renner plays Jeffrey, and while he kiiinda looks like him but not really, all such concerns about superficial physical resemblance go down the toilet like so many acid-dissolved torsos after we see in him in the role for a while. He works a tedious job in a chocolate factory (hey, I knew that because of a Macabre album!), where he gets along fine but clearly isn't thinking much about his career. This guy lives for his evenings, and he's a magnificent bullshitter. The movie's first sequence - depicting the most famous example of Dahmer's bullshit artistry - has him bullshitting the cops into giving him back a drugged, naked, partially lobotomized teenaged boy who just escaped from his apartment. He later bullshits his dad into thinking that it's only gay porn in the box he keeps in his closet. This is the best bullshitting I've seen since Traci Lin in Fright Night Part II. (not included is an early incident where Dahmer was pulled over by the cops when he had garbage bags filled with dismembered body parts in the back seat) He might not be able to relate to people in any significant way, but he's a master of forming quick, superficial bonds with strangers, as I imagine you'd have to be if you plan to take them home and pour acid in their skulls. Some have come away from this movie with the impression they're being asked to believe Dahmer did his, uh, his thing, out of homophobic hatred of himself. I don't think so - I don't think hatred enters his mind, for himself or anyone else. He is indifferent to his victims beyond their utility as instruments for his pleasure. But he gets bored, as would anyone after too much time with sex zombies...so what's next, necrophilia? Well, you only live once. I'm not even really convinced that Dahmer (the one in this movie anyway) is even gay; does he select men because he finds them sexually appealing, or because gay sex is farther off the beaten path than straight sex? In one of life's little curiosities, I'd bet the gay angle will freak out people renting this movie more than the necrophilia will. Note how he gives his friend (who he plans on killing) a few more minutes to amuse him with the story of how he almost had sex with his aunt. He stops being impressed when he finds out the aunt wasn't blood related. This guy is all about indulging himself in the unthinkable - and as is often the case when exploring extremity, he has to continually take it to the next level. The scene where he has sex with his first corpse is mind-blowing - I don't know how many gay necrophilia scenes there are to compare this with, but this one's intense, horrifying and visually arresting, in all the right quantities, without going overboard. Later on (actually much earlier, chronologically - the movie's structure is a little back-and-forth between teenage Jeffrey and adult Jeffrey), he dismembers a corpse, but it's not easy for him - he has to rely on some liquid courage, but he gets it done. After every close call he has with getting caught, he has to kick it above. If he'd kept escaping police notice, he'd have gotten bored of that too, and moved on to fat, hairy, old man-carcasses, then porpoise blowholes, then he'd assemble a giant, quivering machine-sculpture made of stitched-together human and animal pieces, and have sex with that. Unlike the other biopics, Dahmer does not end with its subject's apprehension or the meting out of justice; Jeffrey just walks off, like he did again and again and again. Moreso than the other movies, this one makes the point that serial killings happen in part due to the failures and inactions of people close to what's going on. The cops caught Dahmer with one victim, and just gave him back. A bartender, after apparently years of suspicion, catches Dahmer spiking a drink and merely has him roughed up and thrown out. In more ways than one, serial killers rely a lot on other people's idiocy to keep themselves in business. When the real Dahmer was finally caught, it was because one victim, Tracy Edwards, managed to escape his apartment. In this movie, an apparently fictionalized version of Edwards named Rodney is played by Artel Kayaru - a role that crops up throughout the film as Rodney repeatedly tries to get close to him, enjoys his company, but there's never any real connection. Rodney only gets away in this movie because Jeffrey for once hesitates when the time comes to kill, because he'd gotten closer to him than any other victim had. I do not know just how close this was to how it really happened - I don't even know if the real Dahmer even knew Edwards before that night (day?). But for the purposes of the narrative, it might suggest a redemptive act for Jeffrey, however unintended - if only the movie covered his apprehension and incarceration. Dahmer does gloss over a few details, like the cannibalism - it plays a little fast and loose with the facts, but those facts are usually limited to fairly trivial things like the wheres and whens. The sex zombie lives longer than the real ones did (they never lived longer than about a day). The circumstances of his death (killed by an inmate who was as crazy as he was) are not mentioned, nor is how his crimes necessitated the tearing down of his entire apartment building, presumably because room 213 was in danger of becoming a freak mecca. Dahmer left behind a lot of pissed-off neighbors. I remember seeing Jeffrey Dahmer and his father on Nightline - or maybe 60 Minutes, it was years and years ago. Lionel Dahmer stuck by his son to the very end - this is the man who's face you'd see if you looked up "unconditional love" in the dictionary. Jeffrey's upbringing wasn't abusive, twistedly religious, hateful, or even weird - he came from a normal family of nice people, and I think that's one of the reasons why he was a more interesting case than most other serial killers. I was chilled by how calm, rational, matter-of-fact and normal Jeffrey seemed, apart from exactly what he was saying (he was talking about the head in the box). He seemed neither remorseful, nor prideful, just embarrassed. It's hard to talk about some things in front of your dad. BACK TO THE D's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE