When you hear the name Jeffrey Dahmer, you don’t have to know much about him to shudder and feel a chill down your spine. Dahmer’s atrocities are known far and wide as some of the most gruesome in American history, and there have been one too many adaptations of this serial killer’s life.
The most recent adaptation, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, created and penned by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, is on Netflix and chronicles Dahmer’s murders between 1978-1991 and has not boded well with the very real families of the victims.
Evan Peters, who plays Jeffrey Dahmer in the series, has gone on record saying that Murphy’s “one rule” for the show was that it should “never be told from Dahmer’s point of view.” However, the show didn’t seem to do a good job of putting forth the families’ point of view either.
Rita Isbell, the sister of 19-year-old victim Errol Lindsey, confronted Dahmer in court in 1992 and that scene was reenacted in Dahmer by DeShawn Barnes. While Barnes tweeted, “ I feel really honored to be trusted with telling this part of this horrific story. I’m grateful the victims weren’t an afterthought but their humanity and perspectives were reflected in this series.”, Isbell told Insider that she was never contacted by the production and their family had not made any money from the series’ depiction of their trauma.
“If the show benefited them in some way, it wouldn’t feel so harsh and careless. It’s sad that they’re just making money off of this tragedy. That’s just greed.”
The mother of Tony Hughes, the aspiring 31-year-old model who was another one of Dahmer’s victims, hasn’t finished watching the series, but has seen the one episode that revolves around her son’s murder in 1991. She states that the show didn’t accurately represent what actually happened and questions the integrity of the show. “I don’t see how they can do that,” Hughes said to The Guardian, “I don’t see how they can use our names and put stuff out like that out there.”
It’s programming like this that has Netflix taking L’s. Here’s 9 coming-of-age series and movies on Netflix that are actually worth watching.
Photo via Netflix