My Friend Dahmer

Marc Meyers' adaptation of Derf Backderf’s revered graphic novel is an unnerving teen horror-drama about the makings of a murderer.

It’s Jeffrey Dahmer: The High School Years, in this unnerving portrait of the serial killer as a young man. Long before gaining notoriety as one of America’s most prolific murderers, Jeffrey Dahmer seems to be just another adolescent outcast, awkwardly navigating his way through the everyday horrors of high school. But when his erratic behaviour attracts his schoolmates’ attention, he is goaded into performing increasingly outrageous acts. As his sexual desires develop, so too do his sociopathic tendencies, and slowly the teenager’s dark obsessions rise to the surface.

With its sly black humour and bold production design (the film was partly shot in Dahmer’s own childhood home), Marc Meyers’ adaptation of John Backderf’s revered graphic novel might initially recall outsider teen movies like Ghost World or Napoleon Dynamite. But beneath the surface sheen beats a very dark heart and as Jeffrey’s psychoses begin to envelop him, there is a palpable sense of a monster emerging before our very eyes.