Monster (2022)

Monster rarely shoots for dark humor in its depiction of the man’s heinous acts, which is for the best. But while the subject is treated with the seriousness it deserves, I found myself craving a wider range of tone.

It’s quite possible that “Dahmer”—despite brilliant performances from Nash, Peters, and the great Richard Jenkins as Dahmer’s father, Lionel—has no real justification for its own existence. If it does, it might lie in the stubborn but elusive promise underlying most true crime: that the perpetrator and his acts can be, to some extent, “explained.” ... The miniseries struggles with this relative lack of explanatory evidence for Dahmer’s depravity, and so it comes up with its own, sticking close to home. It dials up the crazy on Joyce.

Put through a different editing process, there is an intelligent interrogation of Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes, the real people impacted and the consequences here. It’s frequently lost or obscured.

There is almost a conflict between the show’s goals and Peters’: “Dahmer” wants to make him, at times, haunting, a terrifying person whose reason is beyond our understanding, but Peters plays him, very often, as vacant and kind of oafish. This paradox would be compelling, particularly in relation to the way that police basically allowed Dahmer to continue his crimes if the show weren’t so excruciatingly boring.

Dahmer has a habit of announcing what kind of show it wants to be instead of actually being that show. ... I can only hope creators will realize there is a way to tell these kinds of stories with more sensitivity and care rather than mere gestures toward sensitivity and care. In the sixth episode, Dahmer does exactly that, but it doesn’t maintain that approach for the entirety of its season. ... It’s admirable that Dahmer wants to honor the victims’ lives and celebrate who Hughes was as a person. But that effort can’t be a complete success in a show that also insists on literally reducing Hughes to a piece of meat.

Netflix is at pains not to glamorise Dahmer while the suffering and humanity of his victims are centre-stage throughout. This is admirable but, as drama, it translates into a carnival of horror. ... If Monster has a saving grace it is Peters in the title role.

The show comes close to earning its wallow when it turns to focus on Glenda and others, when it shakes its head angrily at the disregard of the Milwaukee police. But far too much of the show is spent standing over Dahmer’s shoulder, watching him in action. It becomes hard to see the show as anything more than lascivious.