Perpetrator wants to tell several horror stories at once at the Berlinale. The result is unfortunately more absurd than scary – despite truly disgusting moments.
Young women are in danger. Through sexual activity, a deeply violent world and a serial killer who kidnaps teenage girls from a local school and strips them of their beauty, cut by cut. The only people who can stand up to this monster, these societal horror dynamics, have a very special ability. Which is primarily expressed through gallons of fake blood dripping from repulsive looking holes.
Welcome to the world of Perpetrator, a film by director Jennifer Reeder currently showing at the Berlinale. The story between body horror and feminist social criticism wants a lot – but manages disappointingly little. Is it still worth taking a look at this film, which is as ambitious as it is disgusting?
The good: Perpetrator has many ideas and really disturbing horror elements
17-year-old Jonny (Kiah McKirnan) has felt for some time that something was wrong with her. When her drug-addicted father finally gives her away to the wealthy Hildie (90s icon Alicia Silverstone), the girl not only has to adjust to a completely new school whose students disappear one by one. On her 18th birthday, she also learns that she has a powerful “superpower” – which I won’t reveal at this point. Reminds me a bit of the beginning of the cannibal romance Bones and All, but – spoilers! – in Perpetrator, people don’t get eaten.
See the Berlinale clip for Perpetrator here:
Despite this, something is going wrong in this world and that is quite exciting at first glance. The parents of the teenagers are not interested in their children and prefer to undergo one plastic surgery after the next. Everyday school life consists of exercises in which the students have to hide from the armed headmaster and “self-help courses” that teach: You’d better give up if you’re attacked and don’t cry, it’s annoying! And then, of course, there’s the serial killer who snatches up one pretty young woman after the next.
It is clear that the filmmaker wants to criticise misogyny, sexual violence and beauty mania here. How Reeder shows gaping body and space openings, pain and delusion in the process is disgusting, yes, but also interesting. I want to know what is happening here and why. Not just at school or in the killer’s torture chamber, but also inside main character Jonny.
