nhborges

First things first: Evan Peters is great. Which isn't surprising, especially for those who watched American Horror Story. He deserves an award for this interpretation of Dahmer, as far as I'm concerned.

But everything else is just... Boring. It's not supposed to be gore or visceral, but Netflix's approach is a little bit too soft for this kind of story. Not only that, it lacks historical accuracy. By "saving" viewers from certain details of Dahmer's crimes, people who didn't know the story beforehand might still be unaware of the full extent of his madness, by the end of this series, and yes, that fact contributes to the feeling of empathy that many of the viewers might develop for him, throughout the story.

I'm being purposely vague, so I don't spoil anything, but in the end, I'm very disappointed, the 6 out of 10 is just because I loved E. P's performance, nothing else.

Premises are interesting. I would always watch a movie about/focused on the life of a retired/depressed rock star, factual or fictional... And indeed, Penn delivers a somewhat convincing performance as (Robert Smith-inspired?) Cheyenne (poor choice of pseudonym, if you ask me, but hey, there's also a band called "The Pieces of Sh*t", so)...

The problem is: that annoying voice!, and... Well, everything else. This is a pretty boring film, overall. Frances wasn't convincing, nor was anybody else besides Sean.

Sure, there are funny parts, but they're not enough to prevent the yawns, or fight the desire of doing something else during most part of it.

My 5/10 is strictly because of Penn's genius, indeed one hell of an actor, but he deserved a better script and a better... Well, everything.

Honorable mention to the David Byrne/Will Oldham teaming up to perform a satisfying soundtrack, especially the main track "Lay & Love", excellent in my opinion.