Watched all ten episodes of the U.S.A.'s 2022 Dahmer (Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), a dramatization of the life and deeds, from birth to death, of a real-life Hannibal Lecter minus the intellectual trappings. Many people I know were deepy disturbed by this movie. As for myself, I'd read articles on Dahmer and litanies of his crimes, and even recall seeing a documentary or two, many years ago, and so I knew what to anticipate, including the manner of his death.
Despite all the violence this is a slow, quiet, and long-drawn movie. Even the seduction scenes seemed to occur in high speed. The sequences were as graphic as those in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, even if the murders in the latter were fewer and far-between. The difference between Jeffrey Dahmer and Andrew Cunanan, of course, is that, while Dahmer collected boys, Cunanan concentrated on rich old men as part of his modus operandi.
In this movie there are frequent flashbacks and the chronology of events is jumbled up, expertly done with creative and sensible editing. Even the make-up department is not wanting; I noted that Evan Peters wore a silicon pad inside his mouth, above his chin, which, with his tinted glasses, made him look more like Dahmer.
The screenplay is very detailed, possibly a result of the fact that Dahmer was very obliging to talk about his crimes, and so, too, were the other characters, including his own father, who wrote a book about him. The movie attempted to showcase all of the victims to the point that some scenes were predictable and repetitious. I wondered why Episode 6 lingered on Tony, the deaf young man, then decided that it was the closest Dahmer had ever gone to falling in love. While it was a pleasure to see Niecy Nash of Clean House, I found that there was too much focus on her and that too many of her scenes were redundant and unnecessary.
Episode 7 onward is a mere editorializing on parenthood, the police system, racism, responsibility, remorse, and people cashing in on crime. Episode 9 was exceedingly subjective to the point of being a work of fiction, what with dream sequences and ghost sequences that may or may not have happened. Indeed, the last four episodes could have been trimmed and tightened so that the entire story could have been told in eight episodes rather than ten. The overlap with the last few days of Killer Clown John Wayne Gacy was interesting, though, especially in Episode 10, where there is a lovely cut-to-cut between Gacy's execution by lethal injection, Dahmer's baptism into Christianity, and a total solar eclipse.
In the end, there were too many conflicting comments on Christianity, including the final episode titled "God of Forgiveness, God of Vengeance", although that may have been the point.
Sadly, when historians weave together the tapestries of criminals' lives, the subjects themselves are no longer there to see the pattern.
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