THE PERFECTION (US - 2019) Directed by Richard Shepard. Written by Richard Shepard, Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder. Cast: Allison Williams, Logan Browning, Steven Weber, Alaina Huffman, Mark Kandborg, Graeme Duffy, Molly Grace, Eileen Tian, Milah Thompson, Winnie Hung, Johnny Ji, David Soo. (Unrated, 90 mins) Horror's "slow burn" movement over the last decade has given way to term "elevated horror," often invoked when it comes to the likes of THE WITCH, HEREDITARY, the Jordan Peele double-shot of GET OUT and US, and other ambitious thinkpiece-launchers. The Netflix Original film THE PERFECTION is every bit as important a modern horror film, even though "elevated horror" really reeks of highbrow snobbery and a term used as a pass for those who like the movie in question but still regard the genre with scornful dismissal. Regardless of what kind of horror you want to call it, THE PERFECTION is a film best approached knowing as little as possible. It's a deranged gut-punch that weds the stylistic flourishes of Brian De Palma with the shocking ferocity of South Korean OLDBOY and THE HANDMAIDEN auteur Park Chan-wook. It's an out-of-left-field stunner from director Richard Shepard--best known for 2005's THE MATADOR and the 2009 John Cazale documentary I KNEW IT WAS YOU--who co-wrote with RINGER and SUPERNATURAL vets Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder. The filmmakers have so many twists and tricks up their sleeve--and they actually play fair with how they're revealed--that it takes some time before you realize you've been sent in the wrong direction, whether it's a flashback to show you that what you just saw is indeed not what happened, a second-act change in protagonists, or the way they have you continually shifting your alliances with the major characters.
In short, Charlotte Willmore (GET OUT's Allison Williams) is a former cello prodigy who walked away from a promising career to care for her ailing mother for what became ten agonizing years, with quick flashes indicating a suicide attempt and shock treatment in a mental institution. In her teens, Charlotte was a student of renowned cello instructor and arts benefactor Anton Bachoff (Steven Weber) and his wife Paloma (Alaina Huffman), and she reconnects with the two of them when they invite her to a cello symposium in Shanghai. They surprise Charlotte by making her one of the two judges of a youth competition for the next Bachoff scholarship. The other judge is Anton's most prized alum, globally-revered cellist Elizabeth "Lizzie" Wells (Logan Browning). Initially apprehensive of meeting one another (though they glanced at one another as children when a 14-year-old Charlotte left the Bachoff Academy and nine-year-old Lizzie was just arriving), they immediately hit it off, first with mutual respect then sexual attraction, and after several hours of dancing and drinking at a club, they end up spending the night together. Lizzie talks Charlotte into accompanying her on a two-week "rough and tumble" bus tour through off-the-grid parts of China, but the trip gets off to a rocky start when Lizzie can't shake the hangover from the previous night's partying. Things then get exponentially worse on the road after Lizzie becomes deathly ill and the irate driver kicks both women off the bus.
That's about as much of a synopsis--roughly the first 20 minutes of the film--as one can reveal without going into significant spoilers. You'll never see where THE PERFECTION is taking you and even when you think you do, you're wrong. Motives shift, perceptions change, and the rage is so palpable that this will likely go down as a furiously definitive statement of the #MeToo movement in the horror genre. The De Palma worship isn't subtle--drink every time you see a split diopter and you'll be as hungover as Lizzie is on the bus--and it promotes an overwhelming sense of unease and doom while at the same time being so playfully lurid in its style that you're dazzled even as you're cringing and wincing. Shepard, who previously worked with Williams when he helmed several episodes of the HBO series GIRLS, conducts a master class in screw-tightening tension, with the ill-fated bus trip a small masterpiece of nerve-shredding intensity as an unfortunate situation turns horrifying and quickly spirals out of control. It's extraordinarily well-acted by Williams and Browning, both tasked with difficult roles that run the gamut of every conceivable emotion. THE PERFECTION is a film that must be experienced rather than read about. It's as terrifying and disturbing as anything in the "elevated horror" (I'm using the term begrudgingly) movement, and in a perfect world, it would be playing on 2500 screens to astonished audiences who would exit the theater at the end, buzzing over that remarkable final shot and how much this movie fucked them up.
GET OUT (US - 2017) Written and directed by Jordan Peele. Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lil Rel Howery, Richard Herd, Erika Alexander, Trey Burvant. (R, 104 mins) GET OUT is getting the best reviews of any 2017 release thus far, and when a genre film shows any degree of insight and razor-sharp social commentary, it's easy to overrate it. But GET OUT is one of the best and smartest fright flicks to come along in a while--caustic, uncomfortable, and refusing to pull punches, but remembering to be entertaining and witty at the same time. It deftly balances the majority of its time being genuinely unnerving but also with more than its share of funny moments, some engineered to make you laugh out loud and others designed to make you uneasy. The directing debut of KEY AND PEELE's Jordan Peele, who also scripted, GET OUT stars Daniel Kaluuya (SICARIO and the "Fifteen Million Merits" episode of BLACK MIRROR) as Chris Washington, a 26-year-old photographer who's about to go away for the weekend to meet the parents of Rose Armitage (GIRLS' Allison Willliams), his girlfriend of four months. He's a bit nervous--he's black, she's white, and she hasn't told them--but she assures him that they won't have a problem with him. The ride there includes a collision with a deer and an unpleasant run-in with a local cop (Chris is quick to comply, realizing it doesn't take much for a situation to escalate from zero to Trayvon Martin), but once at the estate of the wealthy Armitages, things are pleasant if awkward. Rose's mom Missy (Catherine Keener) is a psychiatrist who wants to hypnotize Chris to help him quit smoking, and her neurologist dad Dean (Bradley Whitford) means well but tries too hard to ingratiate himself, with everything from repeatedly calling Chris "My man," to numerous mentions that he "would've voted for Obama a third time," and asking how long Chris and Rose's "thaaang" has been going on.
Chris has a strange dinner conversation with Rose's brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) where Jeremy tells him he has the physique to be a monster MMA fighter. He's also taken aback by the presence of two oddly-behaving black employees--groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel)--who aren't very good at conversation and have dead, vacant stares in their eyes. Dean says he hired them to help out when his parents were ailing and after they died, he didn't have the heart to let them go ("I know how it looks," Dean says). The Armitages hold a party for all of their wealthy and almost across-the-board elderly friends, all of whom try too hard to appeal to Chris, whether it's feeling his biceps, mentioning how much they like Tiger Woods, or making winking assumptions about how well-endowed he must be. Chris seems to be used to well-intentioned whites trying too hard but something isn't sitting well with him. He believes Missy hypnotized him without his knowledge and he recognizes Logan (Lakeith Stanfield), the young black companion of a 30-years-older white woman, as Andre, an old acquaintance of a friend of a friend who went missing six months ago. Chris takes a pic of him to send to his dog-sitting buddy Rod (a scene-stealing Lil Rel Howell) but he forgets to turn off the flash and it causes a brief seizure where Logan, who dresses like an old man and has no idea how to fist-bump, snaps out of his stupor and seems to briefly take on another personality until he's attended to by Missy. Rod theorizes that "rich white people are brainwashing brothers into becoming sex slaves," and while Chris laughs it off, his paranoia grows more intense by the minute and he can't ignore his gut feeling that something is very wrong here.
Of course, something is wrong but GET OUT doesn't quite go in the direction the trailers and your initial assumptions might indicate. It invokes a few classics from the 1970s, from THE WICKER MAN to MESSIAH OF EVIL and one in particular that's too much of a spoiler to mention. Despite its modern themes, it actually feels like a 1970s movie in both its working in of social issues and the emphasis on building suspense instead of focusing on gore and cheap jump scares (though a couple of jump scares here work quite well). In the end, GET OUT ends up being more about class division than racial injustice, a scathing rebuke not just of white privilege but also the entitlement of the wealthy for whom money--and people--are no object. No one is immune from criticism--even Chris is shown time and again to be a pushover and someone who doesn't want to rock the boat. Peele's script piles on the unease and the dread until it's almost suffocating, broken up by Rod's comic relief that's actually a welcome breather from the choking tension (Rod's Jeffrey Dahmer rant is one for the ages). Performances are pitch perfect across the board, whether it's Whitford's vaguely passive-aggressive glad-handing as Dean or Gabriel's often heartbreaking turn as Georgina, whose constant smile always seems a little too forced, masking a sadness that isn't lost on Chris. Alternately frightening, funny, and thought-provoking, with the kind of crowd-pleasing finale that horror movies used to know how to deliver, GET OUT isn't a quite an instant classic, but it's one of the stronger genre offerings of late, and one that establishes Peele, already a respected comedian and satirist, as a serious filmmaker to watch.
