Kicking off the fall movie season, Knives and Skin director Jennifer Reeder is returning with Perpetrator, a coming-of-age, feminist horror-noir feature. The Berlinale and Tribeca selection starring Kiah McKirnan, Melanie Liburd, Christopher Lowell, and Alicia Silverstone was picked up by Shudder for a theatrical and streaming release on September 1st and now the first trailer has arrived.
Here’s the synopsis: “Jonny Baptiste (Kiah McKirnan) is a reckless teen sent to live with her estranged Aunt Hildie (Alicia Silverstone). On her 18th birthday, she experiences a radical metamorphosis: a family spell that redefines her called Forevering. When several teen girls go missing at her new school, a mythically feral Jonny goes after the Perpetrator.”
David Katz said in his Berlinale review, “Just when you thought filmmakers and creators had exhausted everything worth saying in American high school-set comedies and thrillers, along comes Chicago-based independent Jennifer Reeder, who seems devoted to this subgenre as if by a monastic oath. The high school movie––with its classic, standby imagery of jocks, lockers, and losers––seems to have passed through three main cycles in the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s, and in spite of its absolute specificity to the US education system, has found itself weirdly comprehensible and translatable in many different cultures. With Ghost World a notable exception, it’s also never felt especially feminist, which is what makes Reeder’s perspective fresh and novel.”
See the trailer below.
Perpetrator opens on September 1 in theaters and on Shudder.