Perpetrator Blu-ray Review
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, August 5, 2025
You may or may not want to say the following in Don LaFontaine's inimitable vocal style, but in a world of cookie cutter entertainments where
minimum effort too often seems to be the ruling ethos, even when a film may arguably not succeed completely, it's kind of refreshing to realize that
one reason
why may be because it's trying to do too
much. That may be the case with regard to
Perpetrator, a really interesting and stylish
outing from Jennifer Reeder that nonetheless may simply have tried to stuff too much content and competing ideas (and perhaps even genres) to ever
flesh things out satisfactorily. The back cover of this release touts its "Bava-esque colors", which may be a
bit of an overstatement, but
which may saliently suggest that it is in fact style more than content that may resonate with many viewers. The content is almost deliberately opaque
and tonally variant, starting with a fairly rote abduction scene which then turns into a not exactly innovative vignette documenting the kidnapper
(masked, of course) about to have his way with his victim. That then gives way to the introduction of focal character Jonny (Kiah McKirnan), an
evidently troubled young woman who is engaging in petty larceny, revealed to be at least in part to be able to pawn items to help her evidently sick
father Gene (Tim Hopper). The fact that there's an early "reveal" documenting Gene's face weirdly morphing in a mirror before he collapses in a pool
of blood starts to hint that there's
something pretty weird going on, though Reeder takes a while to "get there".
A conversation between Gene and Jonny's Aunt Hildie (Alicia Silverstone) ends up with the teenager being sent to Hildie's home for reasons which
are hinted rather broadly may not be due entirely to Jonny's larcenous misbehaviors. And that's where
Perpetrator starts to get
really weird. In what might almost be seen as a bloody parallel to
Carrie with its fraught relationship between a mother and daughter within the context of nascent supernatural powers, Jonny and
Hildie have their own rather interesting interactions which slowly reveal that Jonny is herself starting to experience some supernatural powers about
which Hildie may know quite a bit.
This whole slightly gonzo element, which includes
Jonny experiencing the same sort of face morphing in mirrors that Gene was shown to
undergo earlier, kind of collides uneasily at times with what almost comes off as a darkly satiric look at Jonny's new school environment, which
includes a retinue of mean girls and a perhaps crazed principal (Christopher Lowell).
That all then has to be integrated into the
kidnapping seen in the opening vignette, which of course turns out to be just one of several similar disappearances of young women.
The result is commendably ambitious, but its reach may ultimately exceed its grasp. Silverstone is on record in an interview on this disc mentioning
Catherine Deneuve in
The Hunger as an inspiration for
both her look and characterization in this film, but she rightly or wrongly comes off as
extremely mannered when compared to a
relatively more
naturalistic McKirnan, though
everyone here seems to be winking at the audience at times, which again is somewhat tonally inconsistent
with the more gory aspects of the story.
Perpetrator Blu-ray, Video Quality
Perpetrator is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet has the
following information on the presentation:
Perpetrator is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound. The high definition master was
provided by AMC / WTFilms.
There's some really interesting information available in
this interview
with director of photography Sevdije Kastrati which discloses the Sony Venice was utilized, though it's unclear to me what resolution the DI was. One
way or the other, this is a pretty stunning looking presentation a lot of the time, and if that aforementioned "Bave-esque" element may be in the eyes of
various beholders, there
are some really interesting lighting and grading choices utilized throughout, including a number of jaundiced yellow
scenes and others bathed in either blue or red. All of these varying hues can marginally affect fine detail levels, though perhaps by not as much as
might be assumed. The widely variant palette can tend to affect shadow detail as well, and a
lot of this film is swathed in darkness. All of
this said, things can pop amazingly well, as in the late scene that is literally bathed in blood.
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