I’m all for new horror movies so when I saw Richard Shepard’s The Perfection (2018) on Netflix some weeks ago (and saw some buzz for it on Twitter weeks ago as well), I decided, when the fiancé was in Japan, to hunker down and watch it. After all, I needed something to do.
What I got was something I’d mull over for a few weeks.
The Perfection starts off interestingly enough, with the focus on Allison Williams’ (Get Out) Charlotte whose mother just died. There’s a cut to her, Charlotte, screaming in a chair while watching her dead mother in the bed, which is quickly gone, reverting to her normal staring. From this, I understood we weren’t supposed to be comfortable with this Charlotte. (The actress’s role in Get Out already had me concerned with her character in this role to be fair. That was an iconic role.)
I would find later that I was right.
Now, I’m not going to spoil the entire movie (a lot of other articles out there do just that, Google it), as to expound upon its theme would do just that, but I will say that The Perfection does play on your preconceptions as to what’s going to happen. Like when you see Logan Browning (Dear White People) who plays the popular musical artist, Lizzie, you wonder what’s going to happen between the two characters (as its heavily hinted in the first scene with the two together, and by the trailers, that they’re going to interfere in each other’s lives in some way).
And boy, do they.
It’s a one-minute-you-thought-she-was-the-killer, the-next-you-think-its-someone-else kind of movie, that, by the third twist, (yes, third) I was kind of like “What’s happening, here?”
I didn’t even rate it on Netflix because I wasn’t sure how I felt after just finishing it. I wouldn’t call it the best horror movie I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t even call it a horror movie, really. I even had to go back to the details on the Netflix page and see if it was even labeled a horror movie.
It was. Several kinds of horror movies.
I’d say it definitely falls more heavily into the psychological thriller, but even that’s too much of a box to place it in. It’s definitely an LGBTQ+ movie (it’s no surprise by now I’m sure that the two main characters are romantically involved throughout the movie), but aside from that, it’s a tough one to define in a genre.
All in all, I’d rate it 3/5 for being fairly all over the place and being less a psychological thriller (or a thriller at all) and more of a revenge fantasy all too on the nose in our current #MeToo climate.
The Monster: Revenge, itself, perhaps. And how trauma and anger can drive you to do desperate things.
Monster Rating: 4/10
Watch The Perfection now (requires Netflix subscription).
What did you think of The Perfection? Let us know in the comments below!