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| All images courtesy: Arrow Video/Shudder |
Arrow Video has recently started to release swanky limited editions of films produced by Shudder, the beloved horror streaming service. One of their first boutique Shudder collabs, out next week, is Jennifer Reeder’s Perpetrator, a darkly comic coming-of-age horror film. And I must say, I find it to be an odd choice for one of their first partner releases. On paper, this sounds like a wild ride of a feminist horror film with cult-classic written all over it: high school angst at a creepy private school, supernatural powers, a serial killer on the loose, Alicia Silverstone chewing the scenery in a deliciously weird witchy performance. But unfortunately Perpetrator never quite manages to gel into a cohesive film, and is an oddly messy and underbaked experience that is less than the sum of its ideas, even if there are good ideas and strong moments to be found therein. Arrow has assembled a very nice limited edition, but the film itself does not quite convince that it’s worthy of cult-classic status. It definitely has its good points, and I’m sure it will find its fans; unfortunately I was not one of them, even though I had gone into the film totally sold on its premise, and really hoping to love it.
THE FILM:
Jonquil “Jonny” Baptiste (Kiah McKirnan) is a rebellious and troubled teenager who, shortly before her 18th birthday, is sent away to live with her mysterious aunt (Alicia Silverstone) in her creepy Gothic house, and attend a very strange and strict private school. A trippy body-horror experience on her birthday soon reveals the reason: the women in her family, when they turn 18, all inherit strange supernatural powers that her aunt calls “forevering.” But dealing with an onslaught of strange powers and a weird new school are not all that Jonny has to content with: there is also a serial killer prowling the city, targeting girls Jonny’s age, and several of her classmates have already disappeared. Jonny decides to use her newfound powers to track down the killer and make them pay.
It’s an excellent premise, with the ingredients for a great cult classic of feminist horror in there somewhere, and I had high hopes for it to be exactly that. And there are times – like in the wonderfully surreal and bloody “forevering” sequences, and anytime that the witchy, scene-stealing Silverstone is on screen – that we get glimpses of the cult-classic that it could be. But the movie feels very fragmented, never quite settling on a tone or fully establishing its world. I felt like I was watching the movie through a haze, and could never quite latch onto it or get my bearings. It has a ton of ideas, but explores all of them only fleetingly, and not thoroughly enough. We don’t explore the possibilities of Jonny’s powers as much as we could, the serial-killer plot is not as well-developed as it needs to be, and the oddly surreal high school dark comedy is never established enough to really work. And in addition to the narrative being a bit scattered and underbaked, we physically struggle to get our bearings as well, because the film is very oddly shot in mostly cramped medium shots and close-ups of the actors’ faces, with conspicuously few wide or establishing shots or cutaways. The frame feels overly constrained and claustrophobic, in a way that parallels how the script doesn’t explore the possibilities of its premise enough.
The odd tone of the film is the main thing that didn’t work for me, as it felt so all over the place. Much of the movie is brooding, angsty, and gothic, and played pretty seriously, as Jonny struggles to adjust to her strange new reality. Then the odd dark comedy aspects, largely constrained to the high school, feel like they are written to be very heightened and absurd; the kind of scenes where the high school has an active-shooter drill where the principal dresses up like a masked madman and gets his kicks out of running through the halls blasting students with a paint gun, and then mocking them for being dead now, and telling them how bad this will look on their school records. That absolutely could work beautifully as dark comedy, in a movie with a heightened and surreal style befitting how this high school feels more like a nightmare than a real place. I’m thinking about films like Heathers, But I’m a Cheerleader, and Lisa Frankenstein here: it feels like that’s what Perpetrator is aiming for in these moments. But when most of the movie is not like that – when it largely is played straight as indie horror, and rather than being a heightened artificial world is largely shot on grounded, found locations – these moments just feel like tonally odd choices that don’t quite land, and are baffling more than compelling. Maybe it’s meant to be intentionally destabilizing, but if that’s the case, I felt so destabilized that the film didn’t work for me. It doesn’t help that most of the acting is fairly mediocre and stiff, very much in keeping with the low-budget nature of it all, and the cast largely struggles to sell the strange material.
That is, except for Alicia Silverstone, who understands exactly the right tone that this movie needs, and manages to nail it with her wonderfully off-center performance. The movie comes alive every time she is on-screen to substantially elevate it, and when she’s in a scene, the movie comes much closer to becoming the odd, eccentric horror/comedy it clearly was intended to be. She is by far the best part of the film, and the most compelling reason to see it.
The movie does have a lot of interesting ideas, about coming of age, about inherited trauma, about society’s obsession with youthfulness, about being a strong and self-possessed woman in a cruel world ruled by male predators, and about wanting to fight back. The supernatural plot is in theory quite good as well, with the family secret of otherworldly powers inherited on a girl’s 18th birthday having loads of potential. This could have been a gem along the lines of The Craft or Jennifer’s Body; unfortunately for me it just falls pretty flat. However, maybe mileage will vary on this one, and others will enjoy it more and find it more successful than I did. I hope so – I really hope that others enjoy this one as much as I had expected to. The ingredients really are all there – I just don’t think that Jennifer Reeder managed to assemble them in a way that worked.
.jpeg "Perpetrator 2023 Arrow Blu-ray")
THE ARROW LIMITED EDITION:
Perpetrator comes to us from Arrow Video in a limited edition blu-ray package – no UHD option, although for a modestly-budgeted indie like this, I don’t think the film would benefit much from the 4k format. The film was shot digitally and is just two years old, so obviously there is no new restoration involved with this release, but the encode and bitrate on Arrow’s disc looks excellent, and the 5.1 track sounds great. The technical presentation of Perpetrator is excellent.
Arrow has assembled an excellent roster of extras for the disc, giving it the full cult-classic treatment. They have produced a brand-new audio commentary for the film, by writer/director Jennifer Reeder and director of photography Sevdije Kastrati, which is a very interesting, conversational track with a lot of details about the production. They have also produced a new video essay about the movie by Jen Handorf, which analyzes the visual symbology of the film in the context of feminist readings of horror iconography. The disc also includes preexisting on-set interviews with the whole core cast, including Alicia Silverstone. Rounding out the extras are three short films and two music videos by Jennifer Reeder. The limited edition package also comes with a booklet of essays on the film, and is housed in a slipcase.
Fans of the movie will be absolutely thrilled with the package that Arrow has put together, and even though the movie left me fairly cold, I am always happy to see a horror indie get so much love from a boutique label. This is a definitive special edition for Perpetrator. Since the film did not work for me, despite on paper being exactly a movie I should love, I would recommend that viewers watch this one on streaming to see if you like it, rather than blind-buying. But if you enjoyed Perpetrator more than I, and you’re among the film’s fans, then this disc is definitely one that you’ll want.
- Christopher S. Jordan
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