Perpetrator Review: A Trippy Coming-Of-Self Flick Bathed In Blood [Fantasia Fest 2023]
Jennifer Reeder's "Perpetrator" is a spiritual successor to 2019's John Waters-y, super-sensory-heightened debut "Knives and Skin," serving vibes as a main course. That's not entirely a damning accusation. Reeder's style provokes delirium and allows her characters to float through hallucinogenic universes, which the filmmaker somehow controls. "Perpetrator" feels indebted to everything from high school humor in "Clueless" to body horror yuckiness in "Society" to uniquely pubescent terror in "Teeth" — a tonal collision that some won't survive, and others will slurp down like Four Lokos at an underage pregame.
Jonny (slickly played too-cool-for-school by Kiah McKirnan) is your average kleptomaniac teenager sent to live with her coldly postured Aunt Hildie (Alicia Silverstone). Jonny's mother has vanished, and her father cannot provide the necessary support for an impending life-changing event once she turns eighteen. Upon the milestone birthday, Jonny inherits ancestral superpowers that allow her to sense hyper-empathy. She feels what those around her feel, their blood pumping through veins. Maybe that will give her an advantage with a kidnapper on the loose targeting young women in Jonny's class — if she can avoid abduction.
Let the blood flow
Blood becomes a gushing symbol that connects scene after scene, staining a young adult's maturation while tinting lights in an alarming crimson hue. Blood is thick, viscous, and often oozing from holes that characters prod with their fingers, as stickiness drips from anything from frosted birthday cakes to moist soil like bubbling oil. Reeder bathes "Perpetrator" in blood but not always as a horrific accent, nor meant to be feared. It's an aesthetic goop that flows a vampiric decor around Jonny's journey, accentuating syrupy visuals akin to macabre baptisms like a headrush of reddened stylization shaped by Reeder's excitement.
From the stalk-and-snatch introduction, "Perpetrator" is brazenly feminist. Jonny and her companions are made to be the more rational characters, surrounded by adults who endanger, belittle, and blame or shame their existence. Principle Burke (Christopher Lowell) seems to draw pleasure from "killing" girls during mandatory school shooting drills, while Hildie's witchy and sometimes standoffish demeanor beguiles her houseguest. Jonny and her friends are left to fend against the town's lurker themselves, while their male counterparts represent the epitome of performative allyship. Reeder has no intention to feign subtlety — that's a blessing and a curse.
Narratively limp but proper ambitious
Reeder's loosey-goosey blend of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," "Assassination Nation," and "All Cheerleaders Die" treats plotlines like splatters on a Jackson Pollock canvas. "Perpetrator" is stuffed with alluring sweetheart romantics, supernatural exposition, and psychedelic horror imagery dancing near "Under the Skin." Still, there's a wet-noodle structure that does leave viewers grasping for some stability. Reeder's style is her glorious signature, but that's at a love-or-hate cost. Her dialogue is punchy, flooding grotesqueries not without bite; anarchistic themes no short of poignancy — and I wish the final product were more concrete than metaphorically fluid.
"Perpetrator" takes surreal risks and feminine genre swings that won't work for everyone. The frequently captivating, borderline reckless Reeder isn't operating within any comfort zone. Kaleidoscope visuals generate a sense of mania, as do close-ups on pearly white teeth stained by bloody gurgles, and underwater (underblood) pageantry paints "Perpetrator" a chaotic shade of fever dream. Either ride the blood wave or get washed ashore by Reeder's cravenly comedic coming-of-self allegory — it's worth the risk.
/Film Rating 7 out of 10