As I am sure many people have done, I saw the preview for Richard Shepard’s The Perfection (2018) and started watching it with a certain set of expectations; I think I was imagining something along the lines of Single White Female (1992). I was wrong. Things took a turn—actually many turns—and I became completely unmoored, disoriented. The film twists violently several times, and there are at least two moments when what you think has just happened is literally overturned.
I’m not going to give anything away in this review. Everyone should just experience this crazy and disturbing film. And for those of you who, like me, may have thought The Perfection was not a “horror” film, rest assured that it unambiguously is. The fact that it is labeled “Drama, Mystery, Suspense” on the Rotten Tomatoes website is misleading. I was literally retching by around thirty minutes in and was transfixed and appalled when I was another thirty minutes in. And then was left gaping and deeply disturbed at the final scene—though it wasn’t like what came before wasn’t already plenty disturbing. Yes, The Perfection is a horror film. It’s got gore; it’s transgressive; it’s deeply unsettling; and it definitely has some social commentary, though the latter is subservient to complex storytelling, brilliant cinematography, and powerful performances.
But let’s back up to the trailer for The Perfection, which I’m now thinking is a masterpiece of misdirection.
The trailer for The Perfection exploits Allison Williams’ stellar performance as Rose Armitage in Jordan Peele’s Get Out; her affect is blank and sinister, and she seems to be the villain of the piece. And she may well be. But if she is, it’s much more complicated than it appears. Logan Browning plays Elizabeth Wells, the woman who seems to be Williams’s victim. And maybe she is. But, again, it’s much more complicated than it appears. What you need to know for now is that both Williams and Browning consummately deliver in roles that demand a good deal of complexity.
Charlotte (Allison Williams) and Lizzie (Logan Browning) take a road trip to see the real China
The Perfection begins with Charlotte joining her former mentors Anton (Steven Weber) and Paloma (Alaina Huffman) in Shanghai, where they are picking the next emerging young cellist to train at their prestigious Bachoff Academy in Boston. Charlotte was once their star pupil until her mother had a stroke and she had to leave to care for her. Ten years later, her mother recently dead, Charlotte wants to re-connect. Her motivation seems to be about Anton’s latest star, Elizabeth Wells. Five years younger than Charlotte, Elizabeth arrived at Bachoff just as Charlotte was leaving. We see two quick scenes in which the girls pass on the stairs–Charlotte going down and Lizzie going up. And, indeed, Lizzie’s star rose while Charlotte’s was extinguished. Lizzie has what Charlotte would have had were it not for her mother’s long illness. So when we see Charlotte stare impassively at Lizzie’s picture on a billboard, we infer fascination tinged with a heavy dose of envy. As Charlotte and Lizzie’s relationship develops in China, however, Charlotte’s motives become much more unclear.
Charlotte (Allison Williams) stares at a billboard of star cellist Lizzie (Logan Browning)
To say more about The Perfection—and where it goes—would be a disservice. Shepard (and co-writers Eric C. Charmelo and Nicole Snyder) expertly create false trails, seeming to send the film off in one direction and then bringing it back, sending it somewhere else and then bringing that back. In the end, and only in the very end, are the entire narrative arc and the motivations of all the major characters—Charlotte, Lizzie, Anton—made clear. And then what has happened makes a terrible kind of sense.
Charlotte meets her old mentors Anton (Steven Weber) and Paloma (Alaina Huffman) in Shanghai
Not that viewers aren’t left with questions: can what Charlotte does to Lizzie ever be justified, despite what we discover are her reasons? Is what Charlotte and Lizzie do to someone else justified? (The answer to that may be easier.) I definitely had these questions and more after the film ended. I have to say, though, as I was watching the film, I could do nothing but react with fairly violent varieties of horror. And I never really knew where the film was going–so I was literally enthralled (which doesn’t happen often). This is really a must-see film. It is unequivocally one of my top ten horror films of the year.
You can stream The Perfection on Netflix.
