![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Amid the fever pitch of home life and the abuse of bullies at school, Jeff is becoming aware of his attraction to men, at a time when homosexuality is still largely closeted, especially in Middle American places like the Dahmers‘ suburban Ohio. Though the backyard-shed “lab” where Jeff dissolves roadkill in jars of acid is unsettling to Dad, little brother Dave (Liam Koeth) and neighborhood kids, nobody sees the slow, tormenting dissolve that’s going on within the strange teen. Recognizing something of himself in his son’s social awkwardness, he tries to direct him toward team sports and other supposed roads to fitting in. ![]() Joyce Dahmer is played to nerve-jangling perfection by Anne Heche, while Dallas Roberts, as Jeff’s chemist father, is a mixture of clumsy sincerity and self-disappointment. Dahmer’s miswired brain circuitry makes him alone to begin with, and on top of that he’s doing what he can to shut out the everyday domestic horror of his parents’ disintegrating marriage and his mother’s mental illness - potently externalized in Jennifer Klide’s production design for the Dahmer home. At home and at school, teens of the era were, to a significant degree, on their own, a reality that’s dramatized to haunting effect. ![]()
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