Dahmer – Monster (2022) Review: Failure in Plain Sight

Is Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story worth watching?

Yes, with serious caveats. Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is a gripping, superbly acted limited series that is at its best when it turns away from the killer and towards the people and institutions that failed his victims. Evan Peters gives an unsettling, carefully controlled lead performance, and Niecy Nash is outstanding as the neighbour whose warnings went unheard. The reservation is ethical as well as dramatic: the series recreates real suffering in graphic detail, and relatives of some victims publicly objected to it.

What is Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story about?

The series traces the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters), who murdered 17 young men and boys between 1978 and 1991, most of them in Milwaukee. Rather than moving in a straight line, it shifts between his troubled childhood in Ohio, the years of escalating violence and the aftermath of his arrest. Its focus is not only on Dahmer but on the systemic failures, including police indifference, racism and homophobia, that allowed him to kill for so long, many of his victims being young Black, Asian and gay men.

Around him are his father, Lionel (Richard Jenkins), his stepmother, Shari (Molly Ringwald), his grandmother, Catherine (Michael Learned), and his neighbour, Glenda Cleveland (Niecy Nash).

Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story was created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan for Netflix. It is an American series in English, released in 2022 as 10 episodes, and it became the first instalment of Murphy’s Monster anthology. This review covers that complete season.

Evan Peters and Niecy Nash in very different registers

Evan Peters plays Dahmer with a flat, dead-eyed stillness, avoiding both glamour and cartoonish menace. It is a disturbing and physically precise performance, and Peters won a Golden Globe for it, but the series wisely refuses to make him charismatic.

Niecy Nash is the show’s moral centre. As Glenda Cleveland, who repeatedly tried to alert authorities about the sounds and smells from next door, she channels years of frustration and fear into a performance that won her an Emmy. Richard Jenkins, as a father searching his own past for signs of what went wrong, gives the drama its most painful strand of guilt, and Michael Learned’s grandmother adds a quiet, sad warmth.

Strongest when it looks away from the killer

The series is most powerful when it shifts perspective. One standout episode centres on a deaf victim and his life, relationships and hopes, restoring a full humanity to someone usually reduced to a name on a list. Episodes like this, and the ones following Glenda and the grieving families, make the case that Dahmer’s crimes were enabled by a society that did not value his victims.

The period production design, all yellowed apartments and fluorescent light, creates an atmosphere of stale dread. Murphy and his directors often let tension build through what is implied rather than shown, though the series does not always hold back.

The problem at its core

For all its intentions, the show still spends long stretches inside the killer’s routines, and some scenes recreate violence and its aftermath in a way that feels closer to exploitation than examination. Families of real victims said they were not consulted and that the series reopened their trauma, which is a legitimate reason for discomfort. The non-linear structure also causes repetition, and the later episodes, focusing on the aftermath, lose momentum after the intensity of the first half.

Who should watch Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story?

It is for adult viewers with a strong stomach who are interested in true crime as a lens on institutional failure. Ten episodes is a sizeable commitment for material this bleak, and many will need breaks. It contains graphic murder, necrophilia and cannibalism themes, sexual violence, racism and homophobia. More crime dramas are gathered on the same shelf.

For related viewing:

• Mindhunter for a more analytical, less graphic study of how investigators came to understand serial killers.
• The Wire for an unmatched portrait of how a city’s institutions fail the people they are supposed to serve.

The verdict

Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is compelling, disturbing television with two exceptional performances and a sharp argument about who gets protected and who gets ignored. Its graphic detail and the unresolved question of whose story it has the right to tell make it a difficult recommendation, but a worthwhile one for prepared viewers.

Rating: 4/5