My Friend Dahmer

 Year: 2017

Director:  Marc Meyers

Screenplay:  Marc Meyers, based on the graphic novel My Friend Dahmer by John "Derf" Backderf

Starring:  Ross Lynch, Anne Heche, Alex Wolff, Dallas Roberts, Tommy Nelson, Vincent Kartheiser

Running Time:  107 minutes

Genre:  Drama

1970s Ohio:  High school student Jeffrey Dahmer (Lynch) is a strange young man, with an unhealthy interest in dissecting animals.  Jeffrey and his younger brother David (Liam Koeth) have a difficult family life with their mentally ill mother (Heche) and a father (Roberts) who tries but fails to connect to Jeffrey.  Jeffrey's acting out at school soon draws the attention of a group of students, including aspiring artist John "Derf" Backderf (Wolff) who befriend him and persuade him to participate in a variety of pranks.  However as time goes on, Jeffrey begins to go down a far darker path.

Jeffrey Dahmer is one of the most notorious serial killers in American history who murdered at least 17 boys and young men before his arrest in 1991.  My Friend Dahmer is an unconventional true crime film, because it doesn't concern itself with any of his crimes.  It's based on an acclaimed 2012 graphic novel by cartoonist John "Derf' Backderf about his teenage friendship with Jeffrey Dahmer, and the bulk of the film concentrates on their senior year at high school in 1978.  The film is almost like a low-key domestic drama, about a troubled teenager, it really depends a lot on the audience's familiarity with Dahmer and his crimes for it's full effect.  The film has some very good performances, particularly from Ross Lynch, who gives a creepy performance as the dead eyed Dahmer.  The film humanises a monster, showing his troubled life and portraying him as a weird, unhappy teenager.  The film mentions the fact that Derf and his gang are arguably exploiting Dahmer by really using him for their entertainment, they use the term "doing a Dahmer" for his attention-seeking pranks such as impersonating a local interior designer with cerebral palsy, suddenly making loud noises, and sneaking into yearbook photos, among other things.  This is an effective, and chilling look at what makes a monster, that manages to feel empathetic and not exploitative.

       Ross Lynch as Jeffrey Dahmer in My Friend Dahmer

Offspring

Year:  2009
Director:  Andrew van den Houten
Screenplay:  Jack Ketchum, based on the novel Offspring by Jack Ketchum
Starring:  Pollyanna McIntosh, Art Hindle, Amy Hargreaves, Ahna Tessler, Jessica Butler, Andrew Elvis Miller, Eric Kastel, Tommy Nelson
Running Time:  79 minutes
Genre:  Horror

Dead River is a picturesque coastal town in Maine, but is periodically plagued by attacks from a  family of feral cannibals, who attack anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths, and also sometimes attack homes, where they savagely murder the adults and abduct children.  Their latest targets are young couple David (Miller) and Amy Halbard (Hargreaves) who live in a remote house with their baby.  Sheltering with the Halbards is Amy's friend Claire (Tessler) and her eight year old son, Luke (Nelson), who are escaping Claire's abusive husband Stephen (Kastel). 

This film is based on a 1990 novel by the late American horror author Dallas Mayr, who published under the pen-name Jack Ketchum, which itself was a sequel to his 1982 novel Off Season, which has yet to be made into a film, and there are several references in the movie to a previous adventure involving the cannibal clan.  This is a very low budget film, and it is technically quite rough, and it looks as if it was made much earlier than 2009.  Some of the performances are variable as well.  The film bears quite strong similarities to movies such as The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and Wrong Turn (2003), but it works in it's own right.  The characters are fairly well drawn, particularly the cannibals themselves, who are more than just monsters.  They have personalities, and are acting according to their own survival instincts.  This is a disturbing film, it's very violent and gruesome, and it is very bleak, a recurring theme in Ketchum's work is that the seemingly "normal" people are as potentially monstrous as the more obviously "monstrous" characters, and the ending hints at more horrors to come.
Pollyanna McIntosh, who plays the matriarch of the cannibal clan, returned to the role in the 2011 sequel The Woman, directed by Lucky McKee, and Darlin' (2019), which McIntosh also wrote and directed.    

Jessica Butler as one of the cannibals in Offspring