My Friend Dahmer

Although My Friend Dahmer does not resolve the impossible question of 'nature vs nurture', it approaches it with a humanity that is too often missing from such stories.

Isn't there something pathological about the way we privilege the pathological? If you can stomach the focus of My Friend Dahmer, you'll find this rewarding.

My Friend Dahmer is nonetheless a sad film about squandered opportunity. Everybody is losing out in this grim, claustrophobic version of the late 1970s.

It makes for something that ends up being sadder, weirder, more boring - but more convincing - than the average serial killer movie.

The whole assembly kit of Jeffrey Dahmer's dysfunction is laid out, and we can easily see how it all clicks together. The film might have risked more empathy for him, if that weren't the one thing he so signally lacked himself.

There's a hint of retrospective guilt here and you could question Backderf's morals, and by extension those of Meyers, for profiting from telling a murderer's origin story.

It's a frightening film, but more than that it's a drama. More than that it's a tragedy.

In addition to Lynch's breakout performance, Alex Wolff is riveting as Backderf.

While maybe not as subtle as it could've been, does offer a indisputably curious account of the young man that came before the monster,

This film has been sold as providing the untold story behind Jeffrey Dahmer, but there's very little in the movie that is a surprise in any way.