Jeffrey Dahmer was a name I have heard many times in the past. I knew he was a serial killer but never actually read what this man had done. The Jeffrey Dahmer Files is a documentary tries to give the viewer information about him by speaking to people who were directly and indirectly involved with the case. It also partly tries to recreate some parts of Jeffrey Dahmer’s life in his preparation to his horrible plans.
In order to tell the story Chris James Thompson interviews Dahmer’s neighbour, Pamela Bass, the medical examiner at the time, Jeffrey Jentzen and the man who interrogated him, detective Pat Kennedy. For those not knowing anything about Dahmer (like me) it felt like it took a very long time before you get to know about the murders and all the gruesome details. I don’t know if this was intentional, but I felt that a short introduction (even if it was only in the form of text) would have had me on board quicker. Another part about the movie is the re-enactment of the preparations of Dahmer. You see him picking up an empty drum in which he will later hide his victims and many more of such things, but I thought these scenes were distracting and added nothing to the overall picture.
The only person who I thought was the most interesting to listen to was detective Pat Kennedy. He talks about how he approached Dahmer, won his trust and slowly started getting all the details out of him. The documentary mainly focusses on him getting caught and part of the process of collecting the evidence, but the crimes themselves don’t get a lot of attention. It left me with a lot of questions and therefore I felt I was missing out on a lot of information. To me a documentary should be able to get you fairly up to speed on a subject but it did not manage to do that for me unfortunately.
