Mental Illness in Horror: My Friend Dahmer & Suicide Club

Previously: Blumhouse's Halloween.

I love Horror, but too much of it views mental illness as a bottomless well of origin stories for killers. It's disappointing that Horror still views "crazy" as a synonym "villain" when we live in a world where so many people with mental illness are abused, evicted, and killed.

Today I want to look at two very powerful films that have different angles on mental illness. The first actually asks us to sympathize with the notorious Jeffrey Dahmer.

My Friend Dahmer (2017)

This is almost the prologue to a Horror movie. Based on the comic of the same name, My Friend Dahmer is about the years of Jeffrey Dahmer’s life right before he became a serial killer. It’s seldom merely morbid, offering a profoundly human vision of a confused, neuroatypical young man who had a brief chance to change. It focuses on the group of prankster friends Dahmer fell in with, jocular but not cruel.

At the start of the movie, Dahmer collects road kill and other dead animals in his shack, where he dissects them and reduces them to bones. It looks like he’s on the path to becoming a serial killer already, although he hasn’t made the typical jump to harming animals yet. But his father discovers the shack and demolishes it. Dahmer is infuriated, but his father sits him down and says he sees himself in the boy. There’s deep irony in this heart-to-heart chat about the importance of making friends and not isolating yourself, because his father thinks he’s just on the road to being an unhappy middle-aged man like himself.

That irony is lost on Dahmer, who then tries to fit in with the goofballs he knows at school, creating an incredibly unlikely friendship that sublimates his darker impulses. He’s willing to embarrass himself publicly in ways the other boys aren’t. That makes him a legend to them, and gives him an outlet he needs as the rest of his life starts to fall apart.

Why John Should Die On Your Next SciFi Expedition

Jeff VanderMeer will soon release the paperback and audiobooks of Annihilation, a novel set exploring the dangerous Area X. It sounds neat, and because it’s from the VanderMeers, it’ll probably be very neat. He’s running a little contest asking people why they should be part of the next expedition to Area X, where so many explorers have died, presumably from mysterious causes. Exhausted from a day of novel-writing myself, I couldn’t help proposing why I belong on any such voyage.

Area X sounds beautiful and highly dangerous to explorers, and thus I am the sort of person you need on your team. I have spent the last twenty years with a highly compromised immune system and am guaranteed to die in any sort of unknowably hostile environment. You will be able to dissect me and figure out what the greatest potential hazard of Area X is to the other explorers before any of them experiences so much as an allergic reaction. Atop this, I’m chipper and gregarious around strangers, and thus several people are likely to bond with me and mourn me acutely when I die out of nowhere so early into the expedition, giving you all a good bit of pathos before Pinch 2 sets in.

The Succubus Argument

I don't see why we're always monsters. I mean, we are "monsters," but we're at least the best kind, better than vampires. They're walking STDs. They literally just want your blood; any sexy atmosphere is just a front to treat you like a juice box with two straws in the neck. We succubae want to screw you to death. You should love us!

At first, you evolved to eat and have sex, and though I didn't take notes, I know which one most of you seemed more enthusiastic about. Then you got culture, and prudence, and we drifted apart. But that was you playing coy. You invented capitalism and communism and skyscrapers – and all for what?

To ensure that you could have a place to stay. For what?

To ensure that you could afford clothing. For what?

So that you could stay safe, alive and warm?

Pff. Those are all excuses, means to the end of sticking it in my end. They're all ruses to get you more food and sex.

Well to a succubus, sex is food. Sex is the best food – the cream-filled puff of life itself. We're on your side. We've always been on your side, even when you got really scary. Modernity has jacked up some suicide rates. Poor little guys throwing away food – my food. My food with shattered little feelings that deserve nursing.

A succubus cares about your feelings. All the licorice strings of your insecurities, the robust stew of life experience, and just a sprig of prudential nervousness. We get it. We want you to be the happiest you've ever been, because that's when you're finger-licking good. I want you to feel comfortable, trusted, at ease and then at ecstasy. Loved, even. I love you as much as anyone on The Food Network has ever loved a dish.

I don't want you to die alone. I don't want you to spend tonight alone, and you don't want to be alone anyway! You want to curl up with someone who looks like… me. Who looks like a dream and knows all your fetishes in advance. I'll sit on your chest all night if that's your thing.

Look, if all your life is a struggle to get resources to hunt down sex, then why not give up the struggle and have the best imaginable? And trust me: it's the best imaginable. I'm mostly imaginary, which is why I only show up when you're asleep. We're sweet dreams, the cure to suicide and ennui, and the very best of homicide. Why toil? That's what seems monstrous to me.

Don't trust incubi, though. They're all pricks.

Bathroom Monologue: Fuzzy Kind of View

The bandages on my wrist itch, and I'm scratching them for a while, for so long that my chin gets comfortable on my chest. For a while I forget whether my eyelids are open or closed, until the bed creaks and I slide left, into Sherri's side. She sits down beside me, you see, which I don't see because these new drugs retard my system. That's what Carlos said they'd do, and he'd know, and he was right.

Sherri puts an arm around me like Carlos was never allowed to in the hospital, tucking my shoulder into her flabby armpit. She feels like dough taken out of the oven too early, and she smells like sea salt and basil, and I dread what she's been cooking while I've been in the hospital.

"Getting drowsy?" she asks, or prods. I can't tell which. I used to be able to. The differences used to annoy. Before these new drugs.

"Nah," I say, shaking my head briskly, trying to wake myself up. I get more tired with every swipe of my head. Dr. Preisblatt's drugs have reversed the way my body wants to act. "I'm good. I'm great. I'm the best." I repeat things more often now.

"Because you look drowsy. It's about time you slept."

Bathroom Monologue: Give Me Your Daughter

Everyone in the camp knows at this point. This thing, this monster is going keep attacking us every night, killing a new victim until we give it my daughter. I thought you’d get it last night, but this morning there’s a new widow, and I hear people murmuring that he died instead of my girl. That’s not an exchange a father ever wants to hear murmured under breaths while he’s taking a piss. Now I hear you might consider giving Cornelia over.

Understand that you’re not giving that thing my daughter. Give it me instead.

It goes for stragglers. People too near the perimeter, or who don’t think there’s safety in the group. It’s never killed a group, has it? So tonight you build fires, and you set traps, and you sharpen all the fucking pointy sticks you can make. And you get everyone into a single group. You scare them with stories about what’s been happening – what happened to that pardoner who thought he could do better alone last night. You tell them his bloody tale so they get theirs into camp.

And an hour after dusk, when no one’s left the campfire, and everyone’s armed, I’ll start an argument with you. I’ll shove you, and you’ll hit me, and I’ll storm off towards the conifers. I’ll piss on them, and complain to myself, and pray like I’ve been doing, none of it too far from you. I’ll be the only easy prey the monster sees. It’ll have to kill me eventually to make good on its threat.

You wait until it’s eating me. Until I’m screaming in pain. Then you bring everyone down on that thing and you kill it, cut off its head, tear out its lungs, so that it never bothers anyone again.

Then you don’t have to worry about it killing us in the night anymore. Then you just got to worry about raising my little girl.

Bathroom Monologue: Monologue of father talking daughter out of suicide

"Sweety, put down the screwdriver. I miss Mommy too, but that’s not good for you – that’s not going to help. Can you give it to Daddy? Come here, or – okay, okay, stay there. It’s alright, you can stay there, and I’ll stay right here. But can you put it down for a minute? Daddy misses Mommy, too. He… I miss her so much, I understand, but that’s not going to let you see her any sooner. She’d wouldn’t want you to cut yourself like that. Don’t you remember how upset she’d get whenever we messed up our clothes? No, Sweety, she’d hate it if you hurt yourself. She loved how brave you are. Don’t you remember that time she was out in the blinding rain, and you leaned out the window and got all soaking wet, and never stopped calling for her, so she couldn’t hear her way to the truck? That, she was proud of. That’s my girl. Just put it down for a second. I won’t move, but you can if you want. Would you like to sit in Daddy’s lap for a little while. We can go over by the window – that’s good. That’s perfect, Sweety, here you go. You’re fine. You’re fine, I know, I know. What—no, I don’t think she’s coming back, Sweety, but we can wait by the window tonight if you want. I’ll put it open a crack, but only a crack. She hated when you got your clothes wet."