Is being a serial killer a red flag?

Serial killer biographical dramas seem to be hitting streaming platforms by storm, showcasing viewers a more up-close, personal insight into the life of killers. However, is it a problem they’re giving leading antagonist roles to some of Hollywood’s hottest men?

Murphey’s latest bio-drama ‘Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’ made history by being watched a total of 496 million hours in its first two weeks, making it the ninth most-watched English-speaking series ever! This adaptation of Dahmer’s case introduced Evan Peters as the serial killer Dahmer himself. Not shy to this kind of role, Evan has been portraying villains for over a decade, with his first project with Murphey taking place back in 2011 in American Horror Story - Murder House as Tate Langdon, and he’s quite frankly been drooled over ever since.

Since premiering, Peters’ portrayal of Dahmer has racked up a sizable fan following on social media – something that seemingly shows people have been attracted to the character rather than despising him for his many, many atrocious acts. Following the series' release, thousands of TikTok fan edits have been created, making Evan’s portrayal of Dahmer appear mysterious, enticing, and pretty sexy too…

Worst of all, some viewers explicitly say the series made them feel sorry for Dahmer – the real Dahmer that is! And has seemingly begun a TikTok trend of romanticising the idea of a criminal to the point where girls are partaking in prisoner pen pals, hoping to form romantic relationships with men behind bars!!!

We sometimes can’t help falling for the villain, but surely romanticising real-life criminal acts simply because the actor portraying them is fit is beyond wrong, especially when the crimes shown in the series are the murders and mutilation of 17 boys?

We’ve seen situations like this many a time, like Zac Efron as ‘Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ being overly romanticised, as well as Bundy himself, which lead to Netflix speaking out via Twitter back in 2019. Netflix has also struggled with this issue with its series  'You', which despite being fictional, has still developed a following of people obsessing over Penn Badgely’s character Joe Goldberg, an obsessive stalker and serial killer.

It’s not exactly groundbreaking to say that romanticising serial killers is wrong. But this phenomenon still begs the question – why do so many people do it?

Maybe it’s because the actor's portrayal is so strong you have trouble blurring the lines between the actor and the real crime? Or maybe it’s simply because you’re thirsty.

From the wise words of Netflix: “There are literally THOUSANDS of hot men on the service — almost all of whom are not convicted serial murderers.”. So, yeah, maybe go for them instead?