Before Netflix's Monster, Jeremy Renner Made a Better Dahmer Movie

True crime frequently risks centering the killer and sidelining the victims, and Ryan Murphy’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, spread over 10 hours and 10 episodes, has been criticized for doing just that. The series devotes so much time to Dahmer’s upbringing that many viewers expressed sorrow, even sympathy, and its repeated scenes of near-capture shift blame toward a failed system.

David Jacobson’s Dahmer, by contrast, is a lean, 102-minute study that stays narrowly focused on the killer himself. Brief flashbacks and a sequence in which two officers dismiss the concerns of two Black women provide the necessary context without sprawling into a decade-spanning saga.

Where Monster drew anger for its visceral recreations of murders and for reopening wounds for victims’ families, Dahmer largely avoids depicting victims’ fates.

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