Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story Review: Uncovers The True Story Of America’s Most Famous Cannibal Killer
Cast: Evan Peters, Richard Jenkins, Molly Ringwald, Michael Learned, Niecy Nash
Created by: Ryan Murphy
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
True crime series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, whether they are fiction or documentary products, in addition to the crime stories they tell, most of the time manage to capture and evoke the spirit of an entire era. Above all, then, if set in what has been defined as “the golden age of serial killers”, that is the period that extends from the seventies to the end of the nineties and which records in the United States the highest number of serial killers in history. The social and cultural reasons for the phenomenon are many, but what characterized the work of the killers of that period was the fact that for the most part they “went hunting” in disreputable areas of large cities, looking for their victims in those strata of society in who, if a murder took place, attracted less attention from the authorities: prostitutes, homosexuals, destitute people, often black. These are the so-called “second-class victims”, i.e., those people whose disappearance or death did not represent an immediate priority for the police.
One of the killers who most shocked public opinion in the second half of the last century, operating from 1978 to 1991, is certainly Jeffrey Dahmer, also known as the cannibal of Milwaukee. The man killed seventeen people, all young homosexuals whom he ensnared, drugged and then massacred (and on which he ate on certain occasions). As we will see in this review of Monster: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer, among the most obvious objectives of the Netflix series written by Ryan Murphy, there is both narrating the story – giving particular emphasis to the point of view of the victims – and pointing the finger at a socio-cultural context that has somehow allowed a prolific and ruthless killer like him to act practically undisturbed.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story Review: The Story
The series opens with the events leading up to Dahmer’s capture, a nightmare night involving what should have been his umpteenth victim, Tracy Edwards. The boy manages to free himself before being killed and warns the authorities, who, by inspecting the house, will discover the remains of the boys he has killed over the years (they will even find a head in the fridge). The capture will trigger a series of interrogations, both to his father and to Dahmer himself. Following the thread of the story traced by Dahmer, we find ourselves catapulted earlier in his childhood, marked by the presence of a mother with obvious mental problems and in which he develops his first macabre interest in death (together with his father he had the hobby of taxidermy), then in his adolescence, the moment in which he discovers a sexual interest in his male peers, but also a sick attraction for the carcasses of animals.
In a montage that does not follow a linear chronology, we are told about Dahmer’s mediocre schooling, which will last a semester at the University of Ohio and who will later be kicked out of the army and various jobs. From his first murder, which took place in the summer after the end of high school, to the murderous madness of the years between 1978 and 1991. Over and over again Dahmer risks being discovered: on one occasion he was even arrested and sentenced to a year in prison for molesting a young man of fourteen, but the judge will considerably reduce his sentence seeing in him the goodwill to rebuild a life.
A few years later Dahmer brutally murdered his brother, Konerak, after he had almost escaped him and a neighbor tried to help him. The young man, a minor of Asian descent, runs away from his attacker’s home in a daze after being drugged, and the police – after being reassured by Dahmer that he was simply drunk (and that he is older than he is), leads him back to the killer’s apartment, under the incredulous gaze of the woman who had tried to save him, Glenda Cleveland. Glenda’s perspective will be particularly important for several episodes: it will be the woman – and her countless attempts to draw the attention of the police to Dahmer – to highlight the incompetence of the representatives of justice.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story Review and Analysis
The series is particularly successful in expressing the enormous social disadvantage that these sections of the population – blacks, immigrants, homosexuals – experience day by day. On the one hand, we have Dahmer who, being white, manages to escape control and is always let go with little more than a warning, on the other his victims, the witnesses, who do nothing but draw attention to him but who are not heard. As we said at the beginning, a distinctive feature of the serial killers who “operated” in the United States during the same period as Dahmer, is the fact that they focused on the same categories of people – extremely destitute, prostitutes – precisely because they knew they could act almost undisturbed, and this makes us understand how much of the problem lay in a system unable to protect them.
Another interesting speech made by the series is that relating to the family of Dahmer, who in turn – although realizing the strangeness of the boy, and sensing where his impulses could go – never did anything to stop him. The father, who is the one who takes care of him most during his childhood and his youth, does not have the adequate tools to understand him and to help him. The scene where he tries to confess his first murder and the embarrassed father changes the subject scared that Jeffrey should tell him about his homosexuality, strikes and leaves the viewer with a great sense of frustration. The greatest difficulties of his father, but also the very religious grandmother, are related to the discovery that he is homosexual, not even trying to understand if there was anything else.
The story is developed in a particularly intriguing way, the various phases of Dahmer’s “criminal education” follow one another and fit together in a rather ingenious way. The transition from one perspective to another allows the story to be told in the widest and most complete way possible: to strike the fact that Dahmer is never made fascinating, as often happens in stories of this type in which the protagonist is extremely negative. Here the victims are always central, and the viewer never empathizes with the killer, but always and only with the people he killed. In a particular episode, we closely follow one of his seventeen victims, Tony, a black and deaf boy, with whom Dahmer will establish a friendship and sentimental relationship but who, unfortunately, will not have
If Dahmer’s “educational” years, in which he learns how to be a serial killer, are useful for learning about the story and for empathizing with his victims, the central episodes of the series are particularly diluted and dragged. Certain parts seemed unnecessarily repetitive: the intent of completeness is understandable, but the risk is to bore the viewer rather than to involve him. We are sure that, even compressing facts and events, the narrative could still have had an impact. The heart of the story is Evan Peters’ Jeffrey Dahmer, almost a chameleon in immersing himself in the part and capable of giving life to a character for whom, as we said, we can never take sides. Even in his moments of greatest weakness, when he shows a modicum of remorse for what he has done, there is always something in him that makes him repulsive, unable to create a real bond, both with those around him and with the spectator who follows each other.
The surrounding cast is convincing, even if in roles with less space than the main one: in particular it hits Richard Jenkins in the role of his father – who would like to be close to him but who feels almost a sense of repulsion for him -, Shaun Brown in that. of his latest victim, around which most of the first episode revolves (definitely among the best of the entire series), and Niecy Nash in that of Glenda Cleveland. The attention remains, however, most of the time focused on Dahmer and his macabre actions. It should be emphasized, even if one never dwells on the most gruesome details, that this is not a series for everyone; moments of strong discomfort and disgust are not lacking: the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, when he was captured in 1991, shocked America and the whole world, and the series tries to unleash the same emotions in today’s viewer, who finds the result of the uncontrollable impulses of the killer.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story Review: The Last Words
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is a series that succeeds in its intent to tell the story of a serial killer as that of a socio-cultural context that has not been able to stop him, pointing the finger at the disparity between Serie A victims and series B. A narration, however, drags itself into the central part, resulting in some cases more tedious than engaging. Go into the details of the truth and the problems that arise around the area, half like a documentary as well. Maybe tell a story Keep a lot of details There are as many as 10 episodes, telling the story of both the killer and the victim and the people involved in separate episodes. But it is interesting that it is not boring to follow.
