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Shudder has unveiled the first trailer and poster for their upcoming horror flick, Perpetrator, a new coming-of-age, feminist horror-noir. Released courtesy of Shudder, Perpetrator comes from the mind of the boldly original director Jennifer Reeder and stars Kiah McKirnan, Alicia Silverstone, and Christopher Lowell, and warns audiences to brace for a birthday surprise with a twist as a teen unravels her family’s feral secret. Check out the newly released trailer and poster for Perpetrator below.
Perpetrator follows Jonny Baptiste (Kiah McKirnan), a reckless teen who is 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.
Directed and written by Jennifer Reeder (Knives and Skin), Perpetrator stars Kiah McKirnan (Mare of Easttown, Prime’s Night Sky), Melanie Liburd (Power Book II; the upcoming Bad Boys 4), Christopher Lowell (Promising Young Woman, How I Met Your Father) and Alicia Silverstone (Clueless, The Killing of a Sacred Deer), with the horror movie debuting at the Berlin International Film Festival, followed by Tribeca.
Jennifer Reeder constructs personal fiction films about relationships, trauma and coping. Her award-winning narratives are innovative and borrow from a range of forms including after school specials, amateur music videos and magical realism. These films have shown consistently around the world, including the Sundance Film Festival, The Berlin Film Festival, The Tribeca Film Festival, The Rotterdam Film Festival, The London Film Festival, SXSW, The Venice Biennale and The Whitney Biennial.
Her awards include several that have qualified her films for Oscar nomination, with the filmmaker winning a Creative Capital Grant in Moving Image in 2015, short film funding from Rooftop/Adrienne Shelly Foundation in 2016 and short film funding from the Hamburg Film Fund in 2016. She has been a USA Artist nominee in 2008, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, was a Herb Alpert Film Award nominee in 2018 and won a 2018/19 scriptwriting award from SFFIM/Rainin Foundation. She is also the 2019 recipient of the Alpert Film Award residency at the MacDowell Colony.
Perpetrator Has Been Met With Rave Reviews & Falls Somewhere Between ‘Camp and Cronenberg’
Perpetrator has been met with rave reviews from those lucky enough to have already seen it. “An energetic piece of conceptual feminist pop art. A generously over-seasoned witches’ brew, Perpetrator features a wild array of ingredients. At once slap-happy and deliriously free-associative,” says Jonathan Romney of Screen Daily, with The Playlist’s Anna Bogutskaya adding, “A Trip Dripping In Blood & Atmosphere. Takes influence from giallo films and teenage classics like Heathers to craft a world that blends the kitsch and the uncanny.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s Jordan Mintzer meanwhile calls Perpetrator “Transgressive and true to itself. Somewhere between camp and Cronenberg lies Perpetrator,” while Jude Dry of IndieWire calls the horror outing, “An ambitious addition to the feminist horror genre with blood and guts to spare. Silverstone is a steely delight.”
Finally, The Film Stage’s David Katz heaps praise on filmmaker Jennifer Reeder saying, “Reeder has devised a nifty, sometimes gnarly little horror-thriller with Perpetrator. You walk out feeling you’ve had a big, bracing gulp of someone’s home-brewed artistic vision, prowess, singularity.”
Perpetrator will stream on Shudder and is scheduled to open in select theaters on September 1, 2023.
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