MY FRIEND DAHMER

Between 1978 and 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer, the “Milwaukee Cannibal”, murdered a total of seventeen young men. He ate their flesh, had sex with their corpses, and preserved parts of their skeletons: the monstrosity of his crimes fed the Dahmer myth and inscribed him in pop-cultural memory. The well documented knowledge about Dahmer, the serial killer, as an adult is the background noise for an unusual youth film. Based on the autobiographical graphic novel “My Friend Dahmer” by Derf Backderf, the film with the same title tells of an increasingly apathetic, more and more socially isolated teenager with an unhealthy fascination with animal cadavers, which he dissolves in acid baths. He always holds the cleanly polished bones in his hand when he is especially nervous. It is the story of Jeffrey Dahmer growing up in a stable, slightly dysfunctional middle-class household in a quiet town, who briefly achieves popularity by imitating epileptic fits in front of his classmates. They all called it “Doing a Dahmer” then, including Derf Backderf, who was Jeffrey Dahmer’s friend at that time and later distilled his memories into the graphic novel. “My Friend Dahmer” offers no explanations for his later crimes, but is instead a precisely observed portrait of a loner, brilliantly performed by the former Disney Channel star Ross Lynch.