My Friend Dahmer

The notorious crimes of cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer are only prophetically present in Marc Meyers’s adaptation of the titular 2012 graphic novel by John Backderf, who was Dahmer’s classmate in an Ohio high school. Set during Dahmer’s senior year, the film introduces Dahmer as a perpetual outcast who finds little comfort at home, where his mother (Anne Heche) struggles with schizophrenia and his father eventually files for divorce. The sole pleasures of young Jeffrey—played with eerie intensity by former Disney Channel heartthrob Ryan Lynch—are centered in a backyard shed, where he puts roadkill scooped from the pavement into jars to observe as the flesh decomposes. Dahmer also exhibits signs of wanting to kill animals, and he becomes fixated on a jogger who regularly runs past his house. These preoccupations become secondary to the camaraderie he develops with several nerdy classmates—including Backderf (Alex Wolff)—who make Dahmer the linchpin of their pranks, encouraging him to disrupt the school with fake spastic fits. Desperately lonely and increasingly prone to thoughts of homicide, Dahmer has a last encounter with an apologetic Backderf before picking up a hitchhiker. While the film studiously avoids overt violence, it seems always imminent, particularly thanks to Lynch’s performance, which goes beyond a simple portrait of a bullied, awkward teen, to suggest what he will become. At once sympathetic and creepy in its depiction of a disturbed boy tortured by circumstance, My Friend Dahmer is emotionally unsettling but also strangely moving. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include an interview with star Ross Lynch (3 min.) and a behind-the-scenes slideshow. Bottom line: a small extras package for a haunting character study.] (F. Swietek)