His parents ( Anne Heche & Dallas Roberts) fight so often that their eventual separation feels like a blessing. He quietly hates his only friend Oliver ( Jack DeVillers) and won't stand up for him when bullies attack, because if they're picking on someone else, that means they'll leave the quiet, roadkill-collecting Dahmer alone. When we meet Jeffrey Dahmer ( Ross Lynch), he's just north of being a complete outcast at school. He may have been mentally ill but he rejected help and chose violence and anti-social behavior at every turn. The movie thankfully doesn't try to make it seem as though bullying, alcoholism, his parents’ divorce, his burgeoning homosexuality, or even a cocktail of the above, were responsible for his actions.

The movie shies away from easy psychoanalysis of the murderer, choosing instead to let the audience draw their own conclusions. “My Friend Dahmer” ends just before Hicks' murder, trying to get a fix on the 18-year-old who decided to take a stranger to his parents' abandoned house. There have been many different films (not to mention books and articles) about Dahmer such as “The Dahmer Files,” an intriguing, laconic documentary about his arrest, and David Jacobsen's “Dahmer,” which goes back through his history, eventually arriving at his first murder, the strangulation of Steven Hicks in 1978. It's that teenage self that occupies Marc Meyers' excellent and disturbing “My Friend Dahmer,” based on the graphic novel by cartoonist/artist John Beckderf, who knew Dahmer as a kid. He'd simply channeled his alienation into unspeakable mutilation and sexually charged murder.

Dahmer never grew past his miserable, depressed teenage self. Anyone who knew Dahmer as a kid would have recognized the despondent body language. He didn't struggle until it was clear that there was no getting out of the situation. He shuffled around the apartment, unaware of the personal space of the officers whom he breezed past handing out bits of evidence they asked for in the room. He seemed ready for them, had made no attempt to conceal the evidence of his previous murders, nor the body parts in the fridge. It's perhaps unsurprising that Dahmer put up next to no fight when the arresting officers knocked on his door, accompanied by a would-be victim he'd let escape. The Milwaukee-born serial killer claimed 17 victims before he was apprehended by police in his hometown. Before he was killed in prison by another inmate in 1994, Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes captured America's attention through the seemingly boundless nature of his depravity.

My friend dahmer movie showtime 25177