[Film Review] Perpetrator (2023)

Please note: This review contains spoliers.

Perpetrator opens with a girl walking alone in the dark. Her hair is long and loose just begging to be yanked back and her bright clothes—a blood red coat, in fact—is a literal matador’s cape for anything that lies beyond the beam of her phone screen. Bad things will happen to this girl.

A disembodied voice breaks the silence. “Emily, girls like you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” But all girls know what we’ve got. This is why we make Uber/Lyft karma deals with ourselves, hoping that by over tipping on all those late-night rides we stack up the moral points to make it home safely. It’s why in real life when we walk those quiet, unlit streets we clutch keys in our hands. Why every night out usually starts out with location settings set up with another girl. Movies force us to suspend the disbelief that any woman would venture out without any of these systems in place otherwise what is the scary story to be told? Girls like Emily, no, we know what we’ve got every minute of the day but it’s that fear that Perpetrator feeds on and eventually manages to turn on itself. 

Jonquil, who goes by Jonny (Kiah McKirnan) lives hand to mouth with her dad Gene, committing petty crimes to get them both by. But strange things start happening to Jonny. More so than the regular growing pains of a teenage girl. Dad’s not great with the regular stuff let alone when her face starts mutating in the mirror, turning into various others’ complete with their voices. Jonny seems to be manifesting powers of some sort and as it’s on the cusp of her 18th birthday, it’s a literal but also slightly clumsy metaphor for a young woman blossoming into more, and definitely nothing a man can handle, especially not when you add blood to the mix. Men are just so more squeamish about blood, have we ever noticed this? Off he shuttles her to Auntie Hildie’s (Alicia Silverstone). Complete with her gothic house and Yes, Mistress attitude she seems to have an inkling about what’s turning her niece’s blood feral. 

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The dangers inherent to surviving adolescence are starkly highlighted at Jonny’s new prep school “You girls. You’re so vibrant. Your survival depends on you,” weeps the principal, truly a high school drama teacher turned actual person of authority and the only man who apparently cares about their fate. Played with that perfect balance of “Your principal is your PAL,” cool-guy grown-up and unhinged adult who never met his full potential, Principal Burke (Christopher Lowell) initiates school shooter drills to keep them on their toes. Less reassuring is the fact that he plays the shooter as he corners Jonny and three of her new classmates under a desk and sprays them in fake blood announcing, “FOUR DEAD IN MRS. DANVERS CLASSROOM.” It’s the perfect summation of the reality of the world we live in and the dark comedy it’s become as the girls lament that this is the second time they’ve been “killed” this month and their parents are going to ground them when they find out. More than the regular constant awareness survival drills are the fact that one by one girls have been disappearing, the latest being Evelyn. The face that Jonny has been seeing every time she looks in the mirror in her little dips from reality.

On the night of her birthday, exacerbated by a special cake made by Hildie, Jonny goes into full blood vision sensory overload and breaks her aunt’s toilet. Happy birthday, she’s now part of a long line of spectral mimics; a gift passed down by the women in her family. Notably, Jonny’s mother is not in the picture. Hildie describes it as a possession in reverse; she can feel and sense other people. Jonny puts it more bluntly as super-charged empathy turning her into a basket-case. Ah, the mothering urge amped up to the nth degree. Are we not all supposed to inherit this naturally anyway? It’s not a very subtle gift to manifest as a woman, but as Hildie says, it can be very useful. “Forevering” is a power and Jonny can learn to work it and use it as a weapon. But she also has to pay for and replace the toilet. 

When another girl goes missing, Jonny and her new gang find the pattern; they all dated the popular pretty boy jock Kirk (Sasha Kuznetsov). Why do you date so many girls, Jonny asks when it’s clear he’s too much of a crybaby to actually be the culprit. “Girls are fucking awesome.” And they are. They’re the ones that take on the pain, the blood, and the work. The local cop teaches them self-defense, cautioning them to stay still and never make a noise which speaks volumes. “If you start running, you will never stop,” is the callous warning. The underlying message is this is inevitable, don’t fight it, you brought it on yourself. Well, that’s not the lesson we’re taught by our mothers or female guardian figures. So, Jonny dates Kirk as bait. And she’s taken.   

The culmination of the story is pretty predictable; the Perpetrator is the ultimate predator; flouncing in his lair moaning, “I’d fear me, I’d fuck me” in a Buffalo Bill-esque soliloquy of male impotence wearing a mask that kind of fittingly looks like Andrew Tate’s face. The girls are being harvested for their parts because that is what a woman, especially a young girl is; a thing meant to be broken down by a (threatened) power, only good for its base parts and not the whole. Of course, Jonny uses her powers to turn the Perpetrator’s voice against him and the girls are saved. They run, they make noise, they survive. 

Perpetrator, written and directed by Jennifer Reeder, may have a pretty heavy-handed thesis statement but it still manages to have fun while trying to make its point. The Addams Family elements of Hildie’s house, the blood hell landscape of Jonny’s visions and final showdown setting, and the moody, synth soundtrack all teen killer flicks require now all touch on familiar elements made fresh by a cast that has truly great chemistry. Kiah McKirnan allows her character’s teen angst to simmer just under the boiling point in stark contrast with the times her power gets kicking. Her understated moments of normalcy play off so well with the actual human weirdness of everyone around her; from her aunt making her eat lipstick as punishment for stealing, the principal rolling his eyes during an assembly commemorating the rescued girls, and the exceedingly plastic-surgery bruised school nurse getting uncomfortably bad head during school hours are just a few examples. 

With all this going around her, it’s still the regular teenage fears of not fitting in that eventually give us her most vulnerable moment when she calls herself a monster. It’s heartbreaking after her experience with an actual monster. “You’re special. You’re so fucking special,” it’s not a reassurance but a statement and it’s true. Men’s power is in subjugation, but women’s is in empowerment. They’re the ones that rescued themselves. They are the ones that ended the reign of the perpetrator. And they are the ones that can now share her secret. Another cake is brought out to celebrate with all the girls, but auntie Hildie cautions only partake “If you’re okay with the pain and the blood.” Well, that’s just another day of the week for women.

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