SXSW Film

Jeff

If you weren't paying attention back in 1991 when the Jeffrey Dahmer serial murder story dominated front pages – 17 dismembered bodies discovered in Dahmer's apartment (parts of which he'd actually eaten) – this movie's for you. Director Chris James Thompson gets into it big time – despite his mother's disapproval – but takes a novel approach. He constructed his film using present-day interviews with the police detective who interrogated Dahmer, the medical examiner who processed the victims, and a neighbor who lived in the same apartment building with the killer. From them, the film fleshes out the many ways that this heinous crime affected those closely involved with it. The rest is filled in with archival footage and re-enactments, an actor playing Dahmer in imagined sequences of his daily life. How you react to the latter will likely turn on how you feel about the use of re-enactments in documentaries.

Thursday, March 15, 3:45pm, Alamo Lamar