Netflix Latest Real Crime Blockbuster — Dahmer – Monsters: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer — A hit despite using the killer’s last name twice in the title. Some are hoping the Milwaukee killer won’t get too much exposure, and as of Tuesday, Dahmer (the show) is his #1 on Netflix, but has caused a lot of controversy. Let’s break it down.
foundation
Of course, Jeffrey Dahmer was a real person, but what he did was so horrific that it seems almost impossible. Born in Milwaukee in 1960, he had a troubled childhood with an early interest in animal cadavers and dissection. Then, over his thirteen years, beginning in 1978, he murdered and dismembered his seventeen men and boys, committed necrophilia and cannibalism, and preserved his body parts and bones. He was eventually arrested in 1991 and sentenced to 17 life sentences. Another inmate beat Dahmer to death in prison in 1994.
The 10-episode series jumps between Dahmer’s unhappy childhood, murder, and eventual arrest. In addition to Dahmer’s criminal scare, the series shows how the Milwaukee police did not listen to neighbors who warned them that something was going on at the killer’s apartment. When the boy tried to flee the house of terror, two police officers actually returned one of Dahmer’s victims to him.
The show is disturbing, often gory, and a grim watch. After about a week on Netflix, reviews from critics are mixed to average About Metacriticand generally positive reviews from users.
Hollywood Reporter Daniel Feinberg “Through a separate editorial process, there is an intelligent interrogation of Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes, the real people affected, and the results here. It is often lost or obscured.”
Feenberg and other critics evoke Episode 6, entitled Silence, as an exceptional episode in the series, which focuses on one of the men Dahmer killed, Tony Hughes. “Tony is deaf, and by placing a black deaf gay character at the center of the story, the series gives voice to someone whose voice has so often been left out of portraits of serial killers.” ,” writes Fienberg.
However Variety’s Caroline Framke wrote: Unfortunately, “silencing is the exception, not the rule,” and not all episodes go well.
Who will play the serial killer?
played by Dahmer Evan Peters, has multiple roles in various American Horror Story seasons, and plays Quicksilver in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Dahmer will reunite Peters with director Ryan Murphy, who co-created both American Horror Story and Dahmer.
The show features two iconic actors
Michael Larned, best known for playing country mother Olivia Walton in The Waltons, stars as Dahmer’s grandmother Katherine. Learned is her 1970s icon, but the show also features her 1980s icon. Molly Ringwald, of John Hughes film fame, plays Dahmer’s stepmother Shari. You will barely recognize her.
The series also stars Richard Jenkins as Dahmer’s father, Lionel. Niecy Nash plays Dahmer’s apartment neighbor Glenda Cleveland, who tries everything she can to get the Milwaukee police to call attention to the horrible smells and sounds that come from behind the door.
reaction
Dahmer is the latest in a long, real-life inspired series focused on murderers or criminals. The fascination with serial killers is a reality portrayed in movies like his 2019 film Extremely Wicked Shockingly Evil and Vile, which starred Zac Efron as the killer Ted Bundy. Go back in time with The Silence of the Lambs, a funny fiction and non-fiction story with a killer for life.There is an entire industry of non-fiction books and podcasts, some of which have flashy titles. My Favorite MurderNetflix has already kicked off with real-life crime serials like The Staircase, Making a Murderer, Tiger King, and the serial killer adaptation Mindhunter.
But true crime shows raise the question of whether they glorify criminals at the expense of their victims. , I told an insider about the showShe made a statement about the impact on emotional victims in Dahmer’s 1992 sentencing, a scene recreated in the series.
“We haven’t heard back about the show,” Isbell told the insider. They didn’t ask me anything, they just did it.
Some even post posts on social media asking them to remember the victim instead of the man whose name appears twice in the title of the show.
Additionally, Netflix initially put Dahmer in the LGBTQ category. This category usually features upbeat shows like critically acclaimed romances. heart stopperDahmer was gay, but Netflix I removed that tag The following fan protests. “This is not the representation we are looking for,” said one viewer wrote on TikTok.
How real is the series?
Ann E. Schwartz, the reporter who broke Dahmer’s story in the Milwaukee Journal in 1991, said: told the UK-based Independent The Netflix series wasn’t accurate in some ways.
Schwartz, who later worked for the Milwaukee Police Department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, said, “It’s not right to portray the city’s police officers as racist and homophobic,” the paper reported.
The series also features Niecy Nash as Dahmer’s neighbor, Glenda Cleveland. She lives right next door to the murderer, and is shown not only staring at him in the hallway, but also reporting the smells and sounds of the murder to the police. who died in 2011, I actually lived in a different building than Dahmer. However, it was Cleveland who tried to talk police into returning the 14-year-old victim, Connerac Sintersonphon, to Dahmer, who then murdered the boy.
Viewing method
All 10 episodes are now available to stream on Netflix.
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