CHICAGO — “Dahmer: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” offers viewers 10 hours of television featuring a serial killing cannibal and necrophiliac from Milwaukee. The popularity of this series is stunning and yet another example of the public’s taste for demons and true crime “entertainments.”
This show hit the top of the Netflix rankings with nearly 200 million hours viewed following its Sept. 21 premiere and the 10-episode limited series shot to the No. 1 show on the service across dozens of countries.
It has also been attended with controversy, as social media exploded due to Netflix’s decision to categorize “Dahmer” as having LGBTQ content. This tag is generally used to highlight shows that include LGBTQ characters but present them in a positive light. Netflix did remove that tag, but there were and continue to be complaints that Netflix chose to air a show about Dahmer at all. Some family members of the victims have said the series has retraumatized them.
Nevertheless, it is streaming and millions have and are watching. I did, and will tell you that it makes for tough and often frustrating viewing, giving us as full a life story as we could have of Dahmer, who began killing in 1987 and was eventually caught in 1991 after he had murdered 17 boys and men.
Playing the title role with regular-guy ease and increasing menace is Evan Peters. He’s a spooky sort throughout, from childhood on, as the series flashes back and forth in time. We see him killing, of course, but also as a teenager who drinks beer in class and fails at job after job. We see him prowl and kill and cook.
The production values are high and the supporting cast is a good one. A virtually unrecognizable Molly Ringwald plays Dahmer’s stepmother and Michael Learned is his churchgoing grandmother. Richard Jenkins is compelling and beleaguered as his confused and distant but ever-loyal father, Lionel, a research chemist. Niecy Nash is quite splendid, and given plenty of screen time, as Glenda Cleveland, Dahmer’s neighbor during the height of his murder spree, though it must be noted that the filmmakers massage facts here, since Cleveland did not live next door to Dahmer but in a nearby but separate building.
With episodes directed and written by various people, the entire package is the creation of Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy, the latter a prolific producer who previously gave the world “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” a shorter series about the 1997 rampage of Andrew Cunanan, who did some of his bloody work in Chicago’s Gold Coast, murdering business owner Lee Miglin.
There is no question that millions of people are drawn to dark subjects and demons in the hope of explaining them. But there are no answers. We watch, in the same way that many ogle a car crash, having a hard time turning away from catastrophe. Many seem fascinated by the twisted psychology that leads some people to unspeakable crimes. Humans have the need to try to understand evil, in this case why Dahmer killed and, even more ghoulishly, kept decapitated heads in his fridge and put bleached skulls in his cupboard.
The first five episodes are repetitive, flashing back and forth between a strange childhood and a lonely, booze-soaked, predatory adulthood. The first half of the season struggles to make clear the number of different times Dahmer could have been caught or changed his ways. There are all manner of red flags but no one sees them. Life and death go on.
More interesting — if that’s the right word — is the second half of the series. The best episode is “Silenced,” which focuses on the story of Tony Hughes (Rodney Burford), a deaf Black gay man who becomes the closest to a real relationship that Dahmer is able to have. It’s a tender but ultimately tragic hour.
The series suggests that Dahmer was able to get away with his crimes because he was a white man preying primarily on poor Black men. In so doing, the Milwaukee police come off as idiots, and if we miss the filmmakers’ points, Rev. Jesse Jackson (Nigel Gibbs) drives up to Milwaukee to pound them home.
The series does nicely capture the media frenzy that attended Dahmer’s capture and 1992 trial. It was among the first to be covered live on television, by CNN and the then-new Court TV. And local stations got in the act. I chillingly remember WBBM-Ch. 2′s Jay Levine taking viewers “live” to a cell very much like the cell in which Dahmer was being held and showing us a toilet that had been recently used.
Amazingly, if you recall, Dahmer was found guilty, rather than guilty by reason of insanity, prompting columnist Mike Royko to write, “So I have only one question for the legal profession. If Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t crazy, who is? I don’t want to live in the same neighborhood.”
Dahmer’s crimes had victims beyond those slaughtered, family members and friends who remain alive. I hope they are not drawn to watch this series. The rest of you are on your own. For those millions who have already watched, maybe you’d like to mark your calendars. A new documentary series, “Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes,” begins streaming Friday on Netflix.
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