My Friend Dahmer review: Heightens the mystery instead of explaining it

Dir Marc Meyers, 107 mins, starring: Ross Lynch, Anne Heche, Dallas Roberts, Alex Wolff, Vincent Kartheiser

We’ve all had school friends or colleagues who’ve gone on to become famous. Revere High School in Ohio has produced one or two basketball and American Football stars but, by a distance, its best-known alumnus is the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. This very curious biopic is based on the graphic novel/memoir by John Backderf (“Derf”), a cartoonist who was not only at school with Dahmer but was one of his closest friends.

Relatives of Dahmer’s victims won’t think very much of this film. What is most surprising about it is how sympathetic it is towards the future killer. Dahmer (Ross Lynch) is a bespectacled, lank-haired teenager. He plays tennis; he is in the school marching band, and is a fan of Neil Sedaka.

He may have an unhealthy obsession with dead animals – and with dissolving their remains in acid – but as portrayed here, he is little different from the awkward adolescent protagonists of countless other high school movies. Lynch, one of the stars of Disney series Austin & Ally, is a naturally likeable actor. He’s creepy… but not that creepy.

“Jeff’s a little bit off,” one of his friends says about him. “But that’s what we like about him,” is the response from another. Dahmer’s party piece is to run around in public, rolling his eyeballs and waving his arms as if he is having a fit. (This is called “doing a Dahmer.”)

He is very introverted and struggles to smile or laugh, either in everyday life or when posing for photographs. Alex Wolff plays his friend Derf as someone always ready to give him the benefit of the doubt. The other friends in the so-called “Dahmer fan club”, though, take advantage of him.

They know he is ready to behave outrageously in public and enjoy his stunts too much to question why is ready to act so oddly. They treat him as if he is their own sideshow attraction.

One of the strangest moments here is when Dahmer and his class go to Washington. They meet Vice President Walter Mondale, who shakes their hands and asks what they plan to do with their lives. Dahmer and Mondale make a very unlikely couple but, at this stage, the would-be killer is still on the right side of the tracks.

Writer-director Marc Meyers recreates Dahmer’s school days in a way that occasionally even tips towards nostalgia. We’re in the 1970s and Meyers goes out of his way to recreate the looks and sounds of the era.

If you’re looking for explanations as to why Dahmer went on to rape, murder and dismember so many people, My Friend Dahmer will only partially satisfy you. We see hints that he is becoming more and more isolated and morbidly inclined. He has a strange obsession with a jogger who runs past his house. He spends far too long in his father’s tool shed, carrying out his infernal experiments.

It goes without saying that his family background is troubled in the extreme. He has a domineering but extremely neurotic mother (the excellent Anne Heche) and a very weak-willed father (Dallas Roberts). His parents bicker violently.

Throughout the film, Lynch’s Dahmer always seems to be fighting to keep his demons in check. At one stage, it looks as if he is about a carve up a pet labrador but he pulls himself back. At times, Meyers even manages to make us feel sorry for him.

He’s a loner trying his best to fit in and to be “just like everybody else” but his own dark nature eventually overwhelms him. Every time he reaches out to someone, he is rebuffed. As the rejections mount, his behaviour becomes yet more erratic.

The film stops just as his career as a cannibal serial killer is about to begin. Was it his school or his neglectful parents or his own warped nature that led to his crimes? Was he mentally ill? The film leaves us to make up our own minds about where to place the blame.

For some reason, Hollywood is currently in the process of probing away into the lives of its most notorious serial killers. Former High School Musical star Zac Efron will be on screen later this year as Ted Bundy. We’ve had several films inspired by the misdeeds of Ed Gein.

Lars Von Trier’s The House That Jack Built, starring Matt Dillon, tries to get inside the mind of a serial killer. None of these films, though, is able to explain what precisely causes its protagonists to lose their moral bearings so completely. Films like My Friend Dahmer heighten the mystery rather than explaining it.

My Friend Dahmer hits UK cinemas on 1 June.