My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer (2017) is Marc Meyers' drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It's the story before the story — late-1970s Ohio, high-school hallways, and an awkward teenager in whom the future killer is still only a faint outline.

Jeffrey is lonely and all but invisible. At home his parents' marriage is collapsing and his mother is unraveling; at school he has no one. He scavenges roadkill and dissolves it in acid just to study what's inside. Then he starts acting out, faking seizures and spasms in class, and the stunts oddly make him a minor celebrity — a small crew of boys adopts him as their mascot. Ross Lynch, best known for Disney roles, plays Dahmer locked-down and hollow, with none of the usual screen-villain menace, which lands harder than any gore could.

The film comes from Derf Backderf's graphic memoir; Backderf actually shared those classrooms with Dahmer, which gives it an insider's view free of sermonizing and free of the murders to come. It neither excuses nor explains — it just watches, coldly, as a boy everyone overlooked grows into a disaster. Stream My Friend Dahmer (2017) online on iFILM.