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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't even go here, September 4, 2008
This is the biggest load of rubbish. It is misleading in that it appears to be a documentary. This is NOT a documentary. In fact, it is a poorly acted, useless waste of your time and money. You would be better off buying a jar full of air.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very Amateurish, Uninformative, August 17, 2008
This is a very amateurish production that tells us almost nothing about how Jeffrey Dahmer might have come by the fetishes that made him one of the most bizarre serial killers of the century.
Dahmer is an anomaly in the pantheon of serial killers in that he does not seem to have himself been the victim of real verbal or physical abuse as he was growing up. His biological parents were divorced and Jeffrey was largely raised by his father and stepmother. But his stepmother was no Grimm's fairytale figure. All the adults in his life appear to have been relatively intelligent and supportive. So the mystery of his pathology remains. And that's all this movie shows - his father being mystified.
This movie does show Jeffrey's father speculating that the boy might have gotten twisted by the prescription drugs his mother grew dependent on during her pregnancy. Other than that one little piece of biographical information though, there's nothing substantive here. And the production values of this indie film are so poor, the film is almost unwatchable sometimes.
Whenever the narrative is told in flashback, which it frequently is, the Director decided to use a bleached out, somewhat smudged effect on the film. This makes the actors look as if they were performing in an early 1950's TV episode shown in its fragile kinescope original.
The actors also perform as if they were in an early 1950's soap opera. They sit in suspended animation, in slow, eternally unresolved anguish. When we skip ten years and tune in again, we find we haven't missed a thing. Husband and wife are seated on the same worn couch - against the same dingy, minimalist background. They are still there in long-drawn surmise. "How did all those animals die? But surely, Jeff was just collecting road-kill."
No, there's nothing new to be learned here. The Director's Commentary on this DVD is a little livelier than the movie itself. However anyone interested in the psyche of this serial killer would do better to check out "Dahmer" starring Jeremy Renner or one of the other indie films that focus on Jeffrey himself. These other films, while not explaining Dahmer's obsessions, do give the viewer a better feel for Dahmer's need to totally possess and become one with his victims.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Whoa! They made a film from this book!, June 29, 2008
I love it when I learn that books I enjoyed had film adaptations completed. It was four years after I read Gore Vidal's book that I learned that "Myra Breckenridge" (sp?) was made into a film. I loved Abraham Verghese's first book and was pleased that Marisa Tomei performed in its film adaptation. I read Lionel Dahmer's book and just knew I had to see how it was going to be visualized.
It must be stressed that this film focuses on Jeffrey Dahmer's father and stepmother, rather than the murderer himself. In the same way that Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" said close to nothing of the horrific class inequality of late 18th-century France, this doesn't look at the world from Jeffrey Dahmer's eyes, or with a bird's eye view of him. This is also a bit like how "Cry Freedom" did not focus on Steven Biko, but on a white supporter of his.
Maybe a ton of people read that book and I didn't know about it. Since the Dahmer controversy happened a little under 20 years ago, I am not sure how many film viewers remember it or would want to meditate on it now. 9/11 and other matters from this decade may have brushed Dahmer off the table. The Columbine murders may also have had that same influence. The actors here don't have bad timing like in many low-budget flicks, but some may be aggravated by how slowly the film moves. Further, the work is filmed in drab and sun-erased colors that may annoy many. Still, if you are horrified by the facts behind Dahmer's murders, they barely come up here at all. Perhaps, they feel the first two (or more?) films on Dahmer have already portrayed that effectively. This movie doesn't portray Lionel's response to Jeffrey's murder and I wish it had. To me, the transition from killer's father to victim's father would probably have been profound.
It doesn't take energy for me to absolve Lionel Dahmer. There is no proof whatsoever that he abused, raped, or neglected his son. Yes, in this film, Lionel comes off as very passive and naive. I do wonder if he was more concerned with life in his lab than that at home. Still, I am sure many a father don't want to be held accountable for what their crazy-butt adult sons do! When you read Lionel's book, his meditations on "Was I the cause of this!?" are acceptable. However, this meditating may have not translated well to film. This film may seem "plotless" to many viewers. It held my interest because I was watching the book being made visual, but those who haven't read the book might not sit through this.
Sometimes in film, sons have chin dimples and fathers don't, or vice versa, but this work hired two actors with very pronounced chin dimples. It could not have been coincidence! If the real Jeffrey Dahmer had a chin dimple, it was a slight one.
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