I finished watching this Netflix show just over two days ago and I was thinking about whether I was going to review this one or not, but I just wanted to get what I want to say out there while the seiries and plot details are still fresh in my mind.
The moment I started watching the first few episodes of Dahmer is when I realised this is the type of show that only comes out once every few years and that there really is nothing else playing at the moment that is telling a message like this with so hard of an impact. I know this will turn out to be the most controversial show to come out all year and that a ton of people out there are going to find its core themes and content very hard to take and scared to make an opinion of it themselves. The main reason why is probably because this is not entirley a work of fiction, but a retelling of the life story of one of America's most notorious serial killers.
However, what makes this show so interesting and origional from many others is that the creators decided to make the character of Jeffery Dahmer the protagonist in the story of this show, which is a very daring move indeed. And also extremely brave.
Now what this show is doing at its core, and possibly why it has received such a massive backlash is that they are really trying to humanize the life story of Jeffery Dahmer and all the relationships of the people around him. It doesn't justify his murders in the slightest, since they were evil, but however tries to show the viewer just what drove him to commit these acts of violence in the first place.
I like many of you, didn't know a single thing about the man before this show was released, except apart from that line in that Katy Perry song. So I was going into this show completley blind about the life of Dahmer and at what level of just how vicious and greusome his crimes were, which turns out, they were pretty much as horrible as you would expect and then some. I'm not going to lie, the first episode was a real shocker and left me skeptical in wheter I wanted to continue watching. But after a little while, I decided to watch it all. I turned out to be pretty surprised with what it had to offer and the message it was trying to tell, which I feel is desperatley needed in society today. The message of how horrible it must feel when you actually begin to believe that youre a freak, a faliure and worst of all. A predator.
It felt weird when I started to sympathise and sometimes even empathise for the character of Dahmer which in my opinion was played brilliantly by Evan Peters. When the first episode ends and the show begins to flash back to the early life of him, it is very obvious he is not a psychopath, which I think it is impossible for a child to be. His experience with darkness is shown in full effect when it was presented through the mental ilness that his mother was suffering from and how it imprinted on to him, and how his Dad tried his absolute best to keep him away from that and focused on what he was passionate about.
I've got to talk about the performance of Jeffery's Father himself becauce I thought it was fantastic in the way it was presented. I don't know for sure whether his family was really like this, but I think it really shows that the creators of this show definitley did their research on this. He deepley cared about his son whether he was evil or not. Which as a child, he was definitley not, because no child is.
But as the show goes on, you really begin to see his predatory urges present more and more, which is very heartbreaking to watch since you can clearly see he is deeply remorseful at the start, and then slowly but surley descends into psychopathy as his delusions of being a freak that nobody cares about, which he belives that there is nothing he can do about, begin to take hold.
The true villany of this story is not completley centered around Dahmer himself, but the reaction of the people around him to his crimes and final murders, and how people around him with the mental capacity to know better, unintentionally throw even more evil onto his already deluded mind which would break almost anybody. But funnily enough for Dahmer himself. It doesn't.
The main message that this series is trying to hit home is that Dahmer, just like the rest of us, was a human being who was not born being evil or sick. And even though his crimes at the end of his life definitley were, that doesn't mean the person is compleley evil or sick as a whole. It just isn't fair to make a person suffer any more than they can bear, which is when the true empathy for this killer manifests itself in this show from those who were willing to forgive Dahmer for his crimes, and those who wouldn't.
Anyway, I thought it was a brilliant Horror/Drama as well as being a character study and a true story biopic at the same time. Every single actor knocked it out of the park in this one and the direction was genuinley scary and on point. I would reccomend you go see this if you are feeling skeptical or fearful about it, because you wont regret it.
The moment I started watching the first few episodes of Dahmer is when I realised this is the type of show that only comes out once every few years and that there really is nothing else playing at the moment that is telling a message like this with so hard of an impact. I know this will turn out to be the most controversial show to come out all year and that a ton of people out there are going to find its core themes and content very hard to take and scared to make an opinion of it themselves. The main reason why is probably because this is not entirley a work of fiction, but a retelling of the life story of one of America's most notorious serial killers.
However, what makes this show so interesting and origional from many others is that the creators decided to make the character of Jeffery Dahmer the protagonist in the story of this show, which is a very daring move indeed. And also extremely brave.
Now what this show is doing at its core, and possibly why it has received such a massive backlash is that they are really trying to humanize the life story of Jeffery Dahmer and all the relationships of the people around him. It doesn't justify his murders in the slightest, since they were evil, but however tries to show the viewer just what drove him to commit these acts of violence in the first place.
I like many of you, didn't know a single thing about the man before this show was released, except apart from that line in that Katy Perry song. So I was going into this show completley blind about the life of Dahmer and at what level of just how vicious and greusome his crimes were, which turns out, they were pretty much as horrible as you would expect and then some. I'm not going to lie, the first episode was a real shocker and left me skeptical in wheter I wanted to continue watching. But after a little while, I decided to watch it all. I turned out to be pretty surprised with what it had to offer and the message it was trying to tell, which I feel is desperatley needed in society today. The message of how horrible it must feel when you actually begin to believe that youre a freak, a faliure and worst of all. A predator.
It felt weird when I started to sympathise and sometimes even empathise for the character of Dahmer which in my opinion was played brilliantly by Evan Peters. When the first episode ends and the show begins to flash back to the early life of him, it is very obvious he is not a psychopath, which I think it is impossible for a child to be. His experience with darkness is shown in full effect when it was presented through the mental ilness that his mother was suffering from and how it imprinted on to him, and how his Dad tried his absolute best to keep him away from that and focused on what he was passionate about.
I've got to talk about the performance of Jeffery's Father himself becauce I thought it was fantastic in the way it was presented. I don't know for sure whether his family was really like this, but I think it really shows that the creators of this show definitley did their research on this. He deepley cared about his son whether he was evil or not. Which as a child, he was definitley not, because no child is.
But as the show goes on, you really begin to see his predatory urges present more and more, which is very heartbreaking to watch since you can clearly see he is deeply remorseful at the start, and then slowly but surley descends into psychopathy as his delusions of being a freak that nobody cares about, which he belives that there is nothing he can do about, begin to take hold.
The true villany of this story is not completley centered around Dahmer himself, but the reaction of the people around him to his crimes and final murders, and how people around him with the mental capacity to know better, unintentionally throw even more evil onto his already deluded mind which would break almost anybody. But funnily enough for Dahmer himself. It doesn't.
The main message that this series is trying to hit home is that Dahmer, just like the rest of us, was a human being who was not born being evil or sick. And even though his crimes at the end of his life definitley were, that doesn't mean the person is compleley evil or sick as a whole. It just isn't fair to make a person suffer any more than they can bear, which is when the true empathy for this killer manifests itself in this show from those who were willing to forgive Dahmer for his crimes, and those who wouldn't.
Anyway, I thought it was a brilliant Horror/Drama as well as being a character study and a true story biopic at the same time. Every single actor knocked it out of the park in this one and the direction was genuinley scary and on point. I would reccomend you go see this if you are feeling skeptical or fearful about it, because you wont regret it.