21/02/2023 - BERLINALE 2023: Jennifer Reeder's new feminist horror treads the uncertain path between seriousness and campiness, but its atmospheric power and affirmative message are undeniable

US director Jennifer Reeder returns to the Berlinale after 2019's Knives and Skin with Perpetrator [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a fiercely feminist horror film that turns the notion of the “crazy girl” upside down and transforms it from a centuries-old shorthand for dismissal into a powerful tool of female agency. Even though it has a certain cause-and-effect narrative, the Panorama-selected film is akin to a fever dream with some of its horror elements, often in a consciously humorous, parodic way, harking back to Carpenter, Lynch or Cronenberg.

Fittingly, in the prologue, we see the villain's first victim through the eye-slits in a mask, to the sound of heavy breathing. Soon after, we meet our heroine, Jonny (Kiah McKirnan, also at the Berlinale this year in the Encounters entry The Adults), a girl about to turn 18, and her dad, who sends her off to another town to her aunt Hildie’s (Alicia Silverstone, with the air of a baroness) – but not before we witness on his face that another visage appears to be surfacing from underneath it. Also, father and daughter's noses tend to bleed at the same time.

Jonny's new school is beset by a string of disappearances, the victims of which are always girls, and an apparent epidemic of plastic surgery, played on parodically – the nurse's face is constantly covered in bandages, and Principal Burke (Chris Lowell) warns her to stop talking lest she end up scarred. Jonny quickly establishes a group of friends, most notably Elektra (Ireon Roach, from Candyman), who will turn into a sort of lover.

As girls keep going missing and the principal organises ridiculous school-shooting drills in one of the film's many call-outs to the US culture of violence, Jonny turns 18 and learns from her aunt that she has inherited the magical power of “forevering”. True to the film’s frenzied nature, it is not fully clarified what this effectively means, despite Hildie's lengthy but poetic elaboration, but it should help Jonny and her friends find the kidnapper.

Reeder both mines horror tropes and subverts them, with the villain in the Michael Myers-like mask randomly quoting Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs or greedily inhaling oxygen like Blue Velvet's Frank Booth. But for the flick's darkly phantasmagorical vibe, more relevant are the copious amounts of blood oozing from natural orifices (certainly that related to menstruation has the prime significance in such a resolutely feminist set-up) or artificial ones in a Cronenberg vein, or even bubbling up from unexpected places.

The camerawork by DoP Sevdije Kastrati (who lensed two of the best Kosovar films, The Marriage [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Blerta Zeqiri
film profile] and Vera Dreams of the Sea [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kaltrina Krasniqi
film profile]) employs some of the conventional horror angles, but is most instrumental in creating the tenebrous atmosphere, with intense colours, blurry outlines and shimmering shadows.

The picture constantly traverses the uncertain path between seriousness and conscious campiness, so Nick Zinner's score is at times loud and discordant, creating Lynchian soundscapes, and at others, its pulsing electronics take us back to the classic 1970s and 1980s horror soundtracks.

Like in most of her previous films, Reeder goes for a post-postmodern reading of the genre, more interested in putting together key thematic elements to send a strong message, rather than a disciplined narrative. In this sense, Perpetrator is her most accomplished work, and audiences receptive to experimental, associative approaches will embrace it more than regular horror fans who like their thrills tried and tested.

Perpetrator is a co-production between US company Divide/Conquer and France's WTFilms, which also handles its international sales.