PLOT: Follows models on a photo shoot who are stalked by a doll possessed by the spirit of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
REVIEW: After the first season of Ryan Murphy’s Monster, interest in serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer seemed to hit an all-time high. I’ve never quite understood it, as it feels like we’re making a horrible person into a celebrity. So I also find it a bit difficult to be on board with a film that uses a real-life person who actually killed innocent people and makes them into Chucky 2.0. I probably shouldn’t expect such standards from a film called Jeffrey Dollmer so I suppose that’s on me.
Jeffrey Dollmer takes the story of Jeffrey Dahmer and imagines if he had a doll that his spirit possesses, and ends up going on a rampage through a bunch of models at a photo shoot. Outside of the name recognition, there’s not much reason for the Dahmer connection, as it really could have just been a generic fake killer, and probably would have worked better because of it. Given the Dahmer aspect, most of the characters are LGBTQ, including the doll itself but that element mostly feels like window dressing.
With this being an independent film, the filmmakers opt for more for the Charles Band Puppet Master approach, where it’s often just a doll being moved around by a person off-camera. He doesn’t have any overly complicated movements like Chucky or what we see in other evil doll movies. It’s all practical and doesn’t extend past what you would see in a standard puppet show. The kills are mostly just the doll being shoved into people by a puppeteer off-camera. This kind of low-budget filmmaking can be charming because there’s still passion behind it. It’s when that lack of money results in laziness that it’s offensive to the eyes (and ears).
Jeffrey Dollmer is the kind of cheap where you can sometimes hear the shift in audio quality as it switches sources. Hell, there’s a moment where a passing car nearly drowns out the dialogue. It also sounds like they’re using the onboard camera microphone at times. And then the ADR is so obvious that they don’t even make an effort to hide the lip-sync issue or have the audio match in any way. The audio even blows out during some lines, and it can be distracting. In terms of visuals, wide-angle lenses are often misused and presented in ways that make the image really warped.
The makeup FX can be surprisingly good at times, with some really fun, over-the-top practical FX. This movie loves to have bright red blood flowing during its kills. But we finally have to address the element that brings this down to unwatchable: the apparent use of AI. The fun, practical FX are so often ruined by what look to be AI enhancements that I question why they even tried to do some things practically and then went the lazy route with others. Even stranger that they usually stick to using old school puppetry for Dollmer outside of a few clearly enhanced moments at the end.
In my opinion, cheap FX made by a human will always outdo AI, so while the filmmakers haven’t confirmed it, you can judge for yourself. But, it takes away from the work that they actually did put into this. I always feel weird about reviewing movies like Jeffrey Dollmer as the job is to critique the quality, and these aren’t exactly aiming to be good. For obvious reasons, this goes into the: “Avoid At All Costs” camp.
Jeffrey Dollmer is available digitally now.
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