Movie Review: PERPETRATOR

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: September 1st, 2023 / 09:49 AM

PERPETRATOR movie poster | ©2023 Shudder

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Kiah McKirnan, Melanie Liburd, Ireon Roach, Casimere Jolette, Tim Hopper, Josh Bywater, Audrey Francis, Sasha Kuznetsov, Christopher Lowell, Alicia Silverstone
Writer: Jennifer Reeder
Director: Jennifer Reeder
Distributor: Shudder
Release Date: September 1, 2023 (theatrical, Shudder)

PERPETRATOR is an uncommonly bloody film. That’s not so much because of violence-related gore – there is some, but it’s not excessive by horror standards – as due to the novel mythmaking of writer/director Jennifer Reeder.

In the opening, we see the point of view of a masked stalker pursuing a young woman. This is intercut with footage of less-than-clean surgical tools. The young woman seems to recognize her pursuer, despite his mask.

Then we meet Jonny Baptiste (Kiah McKirnan), who is just shy of her eighteenth birthday. Jonny is a burglar who on the one hand wants to move out on her own, and on the other hand turns all her money over to her father, Gene (Tim Hopper).

Gene doesn’t seem to be abusive, but he’s also not very helpful. He seems a bit out of it, and when he examines his own face in the mirror, his features keep shifting.

Jonny, meanwhile, is prone to nosebleeds. What we see, but she doesn’t, is that the blood pools on the ground in thick, deep quantities.

If this description is too much for some potential viewers, PERPETRATOR may not be for them. Here, blood is a literal, physical medium that becomes more encompassing as the film progresses.

The prospect of Jonny turning eighteen is more than Gene can handle. He packs her off to stay with her great-aunt Hildie (Alicia Silverstone). Hildie is sympathetic, but rather strict (“We’re not friends”). She knows a good deal more about Jonny than Jonny expects.

It at first seems like Hildie is being unnecessarily mysterious, but in fact, she’s being as clear as she can under the circumstances. She tells Jonny that the women in their family – as well as a number of others – go through a transformation when they turn eighteen. It affects everyone differently.

At the same time, Jonny is enrolled in a new school. Her peers are understandably frightened that a number of their female classmates have disappeared. At the same time, Principal Burke (Christopher Lowell) is an appalling sexist, who refers to his young women students as “pets” and tells them that they must remain in a constant state of fear in order to remain alive.

Although she starts out intending to remain a loner, Jonny is drawn into caring about the fate of the missing students. (This may or may not be part of her transformation.) We can guess in the broadest strokes what she’ll do about it. In specifics, however, if something like this has been in a film before, this reviewer has missed it.

Reeder knows the genre well, with nods to masked slashes, touches of David Cronenberg body horror, BRAZIL, and even a nod to BLUE VELVET. She stages a couple of strong jump scares, and has original imagery.

But where Reeder and PERPETRATOR really shine is an area where lots of movies fail. Symbolism works here, without too much dialogue telling us what we’re supposed to make of it. Gender roles (cis and trans), sexuality, power dynamics, identity, empathy, and more are all woven together in ways that flow easily with the increasingly suspenseful storytelling.

McKirnan is convincing as the skeptical, stubborn, and deeply longing Jonny. Silverstone purrs with self-assurance as Hildie. Ireon Roach makes an impression as Jonny’s first real friend at school, Sasha Kuznetsov displays multiple layers as a popular boy, and Lowell impresses with credible smarminess as the principal.

There are a couple of glitches, like how Hildie doesn’t know something crucial that it seems like she should and how the victim recognizes her attacker in his mask, but these are relatively minor.

PERPETRATOR feels like solid resonant folklore, populated with idiosyncratic characters, high stakes – and whole realms of blood.

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