Written by Someone Who Was There
The film adapts Derf Backderf's graphic novel, based on his own experience attending high school with Jeffrey Dahmer in Ohio.
Movie
My Friend Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. This is the story before that story.
Jeffrey Dahmer struggles with a difficult family life as a young boy. During his teenage years he slowly transforms, edging closer to the serial killer he was to become.
Why it's in the Vault
My Friend Dahmer works best when approached less as a conventional serial-killer film than as an unsettling reconstruction of the years before the horror became history. Its interest lies in watching a troubled teenager struggle with increasingly disturbing impulses while alcoholism, isolation and a fractured family life accumulate around him, without pretending that any one of these elements can neatly explain what came later. The result sometimes feels closer to a dramatized documentary than a compelling drama, but that observational quality is also what gives the film its value. An interesting companion to the wave of true-crime documentaries that defined the late 2010s, even if it feels more educational than essential.
— Matty, Curator of the Vault
Atmosphere
Unsettling, detached, suburban, claustrophobic, observational
Psychological unease
Social alienation
Family tension
Documentary distance
Contains alcoholism, parental conflict, disturbing animal-related behaviour, references to violent and sexual impulses, bullying and the looming context of future murders.
Dans les coulisses
Ce qu'on ne voit pas à l'écran
The Real Childhood Home
Several sequences were filmed inside Dahmer's actual childhood home in Bath, Ohio, giving the production an unusual physical connection to the events it reconstructs.
Researching the Real Locations
After completing an early screenplay draft, Marc Meyers stayed with Backderf in Ohio and toured locations from their youth, including the school, woods, houses and Dahmer property, before revising the script.
Reconstructing the Backyard Hut
Meyers and Backderf identified where Dahmer's teenage hut had originally stood, and the production constructed its version in that location.
A Disney Star Against Type
Casting Ross Lynch, then strongly associated with Disney Channel, deliberately worked against audience expectations, with Backderf praising how unnervingly familiar his transformation became.
Aux origines
My Friend Dahmer
The film adapts Backderf's autobiographical graphic novel about attending high school with Jeffrey Dahmer, reconstructing the years immediately preceding Dahmer's first murder through the memories and research of someone who actually knew him.
Palette
Les couleurs du film
Suburban Brown#806C59
Institutional Green#788274
Faded Mustard#B09A62
Ohio Grey#858786
Basement Shadow#454744
Seventies Beige#B5A58B
Images
