52 Films by Women Vol 7. 29. PERPETRATOR (Director: Jennifer Reeder)
When is a horror movie not a horror movie? When it deliberately avoids scaring the audience. Perpetrator , an American film written and directed by Jennifer Reeder set to be released on the subscription channel Shudder, has plenty of blood, implements of torture, disappeared girls, metamorphoses of different types – the shuddering face effect is a clue that something is going on – and a high school, coming-of-age setting (the protagonist’s 18 th birthday has a heightened significance) but for long stretches plays like a knowing riff on the genre. You watch it not with impending dread but with impatience. Reeder isn’t creating and manipulating expectations in the way that other directors do, although we have some suspicions of who the perpetrator is. Rather, with incessant but barely commented upon nose bleeds – at least two characters resemble Jack Nicholson’s JJ Gittes post-knife wound look in Chinatown – it reproduces horror tropes without the thrill, including that stock pos...