Main cast: Allison Williams (Charlotte Willmore), Logan Browning (Elizabeth Wells), Alaina Huffman (Paloma), Mark Kandborg (Theis), Graeme Duffy (Geoffrey), Eileen Tian (Zhang Li), and Steven Weber (Anton)
Director: Richard Shepard
Charlotte Willmore, a talented young cellist, had to leave the prestigious Bachoff music school to care for her terminally ill mother. Well, when her mother thoughtfully dies shortly after the movie begins, our young lady reconnects with the principal of Bachoff, Anton, perhaps hoping that maybe she can pick up the cello again. She soon meets Izzie Wells, Anton’s star student, and the two ladies hit it off and are soon lovers.
Well, hold that thought. Things are not so simple, as anyone that had watched Suspiria would point out: one moment they are making beautiful music together, and then Izzie seems determined to kill Charlotte. Is this love or professional jealousy at work? Of course, Bachoff has its own dark secrets too, as Charlotte will soon discover.
It is pretty easy to deduce that there is something very wrong with Bachoff, especially when the principal is played by Steven Weber, who can’t help but to exude sleazy smarm in every role he is cast in. However, this movie spends so long making the story seem to be a toxic love-hate relationship between two talented and likely deranged musicians, that when the twists start piling, it seems like these twists are pulled out of the three screenwriter’s rear ends and blended into yummy diarrhea puree. A part of me wishes that this movie had focused solely on the emotional roller-coaster between Charlotte and Izzie and all the drama in that relationship.
Even tonally, the movie is one hot mess. It has some pretty graphic scenes normally found in torture horror, such as amputations and body mutilations, but then, the people behind this movie will play emo teen rock music over these scenes, making them far less terrifying and instead more like the vivid imagination of an emo kid high on weed or something. Perhaps that is the point of the whole thing, I guess, as this movie is attempting to blend teen angst into its brand of scares, but the result feels off. Take the final scene: it’s is a beautiful symmetry of horror and romanticism, but then these people ruin the whole effect by having some band play a limp cover of Hole’s Petals over it. The scene is grown-up malignant poetry, the music is a brand of teen angst at least 20 years out of fashion.
Allison Williams and Logan Browning are solid in their roles, and their chemistry is discernible. They are easily the best aspects of this movie, but it can sometimes be hard to carry the weight of the whole show by themselves when they are also saddled with some clunky conversations complete with inappropriately timed punchlines that ruin whatever gravitas a particular scene may have.
In many ways, The Perfection is like Suspiria for angst-gripped teens, The Tragedy Girls with more gore and without the comedy. It has striking and memorable scenes, and two anti-heroic, attractive lesbian lead characters with a perchance for gory and ruthless retribution, with a blatant fuck-the-bastards anthem to boot, are certainly a pair of leads that are hard to go wrong on paper. Yet, the execution is not quite there. The music is jarring and works against the lighting and the choreography of many scenes, the quips work against the gravity and horror, and all in all, this is one movie confused as to whether it wants to be really scary or appeal to the angst-eater crowd. It tries to be both, but sadly, this is one case where it can’t have the cake and eat it too.
