Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, from Netflix, is in line with what you would expect from a production destined to tell the story of a serial killer. On the one hand, it is shown in chilling detail that atrocities that have gone down in American crime history.
On the other hand, he explores with extraordinary ability the idea of evil as a social fact. Between them, series creator Ryan Murphy delves into a tense storyline full of painful details and designed to inspire disgust.
But, oddly enough, this is not about moral or intellectual disgust, but only about physical. Best case scenario, visceral reaction to brutal images being shown in elaborate close-ups. An argument that reconstructs much of the killer’s life of crime should impress. But it does not fall into direct bloodiness, but into suspense. So he spends a lot of time trying to create an increasingly tough atmosphere. However, more artificial.
The result is a well-executed product. this again twists the serial killer horror narrative for the sake of entertainment. Even harder, it turns a series of heinous crimes into a context for thinking about the character. Something in common over the last decade and what Monster: The Geoffrey Dahme Storyr goes to a new level.
The culture surrounding serial killers often romanticizes the idea of absolute evil to the point where criminals turn into misunderstood villains. Or, at best, in fatal creatures crushed by predestination to violence. Serial killers are rarely portrayed as violent criminals and their victims as real men and women.
A glimpse of the bloody world
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story follows a route map through the inner darkness of his character. But discard the idea that the killer wasn’t just the result of abuse or internalized homophobia. Murphy, who has decided to give his television creation a touch of humanity, leaves aside the image of the real Dahmer. In the same time, delves into a fictional figure that fits the idea of urban horror adapted into a TV show. As well as forgetting that behind the smallest details about cannibalism and sexual violence, there is hardly a real look at the victims.
In the show’s universe, Dahmer’s long list of murders serves only as a function of a careful selection of horror stories. The creator of the series wants to create conditions to show a monster with a human face. One that, moreover, is supported by the restrained and brilliant performance of actor Evan Peters.
The combination results in the series having a strange split personality. A formally impeccable show that is impressive – and at times claustrophobic and unbearable – but also a tabloid parade. In the background, lacks content and complexity to explore the mind of a man torn apart by darkness. A man who has become a nightmare for the American collective consciousness.
Jeffrey Dahmer, the dark myth that features Ryan Murphy
What Murphy wants, and he’s made it clear from the first episodes, is to impress with speculation. Analyze what might have gone through Dahmer’s mind when he became a heinous criminal. This question has haunted criminologists and police officers for decades, and the production wants to answer it.
The script, written by Ian Brennan, Janet Mock and Murphy himself, clears things up. History indicates that the point of retelling a story that the media has told dozens of times is to contribute something new. What could be the newly discovered detail? Without a doubt, murders as something more than a set of horrors. Like a milestone in America, traumatized and wounded by the possibility of Dahmer’s very existence.
But the premise, interestingly, is clumsily developed. It takes almost six episodes to abandon Dahmer’s point of view, which is reconstructed, worked out, and subjected to an actor’s interpretation. Also to the tension of the scenario. The plot begins at the end of a well-known story – when Dahmer has turned into a ghostly media star – and tells his horror story in retrospect.
But the resource lacks the most obvious elements of the story. So much so that the fourth and fifth chapters seem like clumsy reproductions of a low-quality documentary. Which, of course, does not help the tone of the script, which is increasingly approaching fictional horror. Peters’ serial killer is a predatory, ambivalent, and dark being.. A rarity among a society that despises him. The argument has real disadvantages to abandon its dramatic tone, a show built to surprise and seduce from the frightening.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Storynothing to offer but show
It’s not until the sixth and final episode that the series takes it to the next level. This time, the focus shifts from Dahmer to one of his victims. It is this decision that allows the series to gain a new dimension and be able, in spite of everything, to remember its goal. After a thorough introduction to Dahmer and his world, painful and almost touching closing – belated concession.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story perhaps one of Ryan Murphy’s latest projects for Netflix. Which perhaps explains the surprise of the premiere and the feeling of incompleteness of the product. Beyond that, however, the real problem goes deeper.
The inability of the staging to dialogue with real horror. Those of the men killed by an unstoppable attraction. This is a criminal who even made fun of their deaths. The Netflix series once again romanticizes a serial killer, this time from the side of a sophisticated show. Perhaps his biggest problem.
