Warning — there are spoilers for the film Perpetrator in this article.
As a child of the 90’s, Alicia Silverstone is near and dear to me. I’m absolutely loving seeing her in films this year, especially darker themed ones like Reptile (which may or may not become another essay for this series) and the subject of this essay, Perpetrator.
I was first intrigued by the movie promo posters which is striking and demands attention. But then I realized it was a Jennifer Reeder film and knew I had to give it a try.
What’s more — after I started the film, I recognized that the theme had more in common with another film I’d just finished (Birth/Rebirth) which leaves me hopeful that the women who have taken their rage and their thoughts to the page and the screen are having their moment. So let’s talk about it.
The Trauma Line
Buckle up because we’re about to dissect the trauma of… transitioning from a girl to a woman. Actually, transition almost seems too nice or clean of a word for what it means to cross this particular threshold. Perhaps… initiation fits better.
And any person who has transitioned from girlhood to womanhood knows that it’s not a walk in the park. I’m not only referring to menstruation, though. Yes, that is a small piece of the overall picture of what it means to become a woman, but we face far more painful and terrifying moments than our periods.
Plus, in this film, blood is not a source of horror. It’s a source of power.
A power that we watch the main character, Jonny (Kiah McKirnan) reckon with.
She’s nearly 18, a bit rebellious, world-weary and willing to do whatever it takes to get what she needs (in this case, money to get pills for her father).
We learn very quickly that things at home aren’t what they seem and as much as Jonny wants to be “good,” her father sends her to live with her Aunt Hildie (Alicia Silverstone).
Between random nosebleeds, an unexplainable connection with girls at her new school, and strange occurrences, Jonny is having a hell of a time just being a normal teenager.
Oh, and there’s a masked killer out there targeting girls from her school.
Oh, wait, there’s more. At Jonny’s new school, they have drills for active shooters, for being kidnapped and various other bodily harm situations. In a “it’s funny-but-not-funny” moment of the film, the girls hide under a desk during an active shooter drill only to be shot “dead” with a paint gun.
This is obviously exaggerated but it also speaks directly to the real-life horror teenagers are facing every day.
But the beating heart and sheer terror in this film really boils down to this:
The peril young women face to their bodily autonomy.
Jonny’s initiation into womanhood is referred to as “the forevering” and there’s something within me that wants to hug that phrase to me as a shield. There are so many ways in which we can dissect and discuss what it means to “forever,” but what I find fascinating is that a part of the process in the film includes a deepening of empathy.
As the girls enter their “forevering,” the silent bond they share is one of empathy. Of understanding. It doesn’t mean they have to like each other. But it does mean that when one of them becomes prey to be hunted… they all feel it. Every single one feels the horror rise within them.
Not unlike how we women feel when we watch a news report of a woman snatched up from the sidewalks while jogging only to be assaulted and killed.
In the “real world” as much as we don’t want to confront or admit it — we’re prey. We tell each other each as much with our “rules” and our ways of being.
But in Perpetrator, the women who experience and grow into their “forevering” do not have that same reality. They wield their empathy and their togetherness like a weapon of mass destruction. They turn the tables on who is the hunter and who is the prey.
As our reality becomes more and more like a dystopian novel, the more and more I’m seeing films like this being made. It’s a rallying cry. A wake-up call. A call to arms. Women face more transitions, more initiations, more blood and more danger than we ever have. And it’s films like Perpetrator that remind us of our inherent power. They remind us that once upon a time before the patriarchy, before colonization, before capitalism, women shared nearly everything with each other.
Including our powers. Including our fears.
I think beneath everything examined in this film, that’s the true horror — that we have lost our shared connection with one another. That our fractured and insufficient means of dealing with our diminished importance has led us to shrink down. To be the prey.
But we don’t have to be.
The Storytelling
Well, if you read the trauma line, you know that this film uses a shit ton of metaphors (namely… blood) to get to the heart of the message. But there’s a lot about this film that deviates from a lot of storytelling norms. It’s actually refreshing.
For one, the kidnapping and murder of the girls isn’t the main focus of the film. It’s there peripherally but it’s not what truly matters which is a departure from other serial killer/murder horror films.
One of the things I found most profound (and yes, a little frustrating) was the ways in which it deviates from other “shape-shifting” horror films. Make no mistake… this IS indeed a shape-shifting tale… but not in the vein of vampires or werewolves. It’s the shape-shifting we must do as we move from girl to woman. But the “rules” are never clarified. The “forevering” isn’t really ever explained (which I’m actually okay with). But it is a deviation, nonetheless, from other horror shape-shifting genre pieces that have to do a little bit more work around world building and the “rules” of becoming.
The most effective way Reeder subverts genre tropes is the spin of the “coming-of-age” story. Coupled with what we learn about the “forevering” — we see that perhaps we’re always coming of age… that’s it’s never a one and done thing. That it is something we’re… forevering.
Want to see what films could be up next for this series? Check out my Letterboxd account → https://boxd.it/pktaA