My Friend Dahmer

And so it has come to this. The serial killer biopic, Part 1.

You would rather watch James Dean's messed up childhood, I know, but you're stuck with the early years of Jeff Dahmer who murdered 17 gay guys, had sex with them after death, cut them up, ate bits, bottled their genitalia and disposed of the rest.

Charming.

At high school Jeff had no friends so what's the title all about? Home life is dysfunctional, but not unusually so. His mother (played with dramatic delight by Anne Heche) is off the rails and his father is an authoritarian bully. Jeff does the sensible thing. He retreats into is own world, a shed in the woods, where he melts dead animals in acid. He is fascinated by bones.

Amongst his peers he is ignored, or laughed at, because he's too shy to defend himself. He is not bad looking but the girls find him weird, possibly because he's not interested in them. He has a crush on the school doc.

One day he pretends to have an epileptic fit in the corridor. The cool crowd think this hilarious and so adopt him as their court jester who "spazes out" on cue. It's patronising and a bit sick but Jeff doesn't mind. He has friends who are not real friends. They use him as a performance clown when bored.

You could watch Marc Meyers' movie and pick out scenes that indicate the obsessive psychological damage which will emerge later in adulthood as something monstrous. Or you might ask yourself, why is this making me feel so depressed?

Ross Lynch's performance as Jeff is too locked up to expose personality. With shoulders hunched and eyes to the ground, he acts like a waxwork nervous of the sun. And yet isn't this the stereotype of every loner with evil intentions?

Hannibal Lecter was interesting because his manners were immaculate and his intellect played games with morality. Jeff Dahmer is the star of his own nightmares, a face in the crowd. Who would guess what he will become? Who would notice?