THE PERFECTION: Twists Galore In Half-Baked Netflix Thriller

Broadly speaking, I have a somewhat irrational disdain for the current atmosphere of spoilerphobia that is plaguing popular culture. The discourse around Avengers: Endgame was ugly enough, but it seems like this is going to be a regular aspect of how audiences consume media in the future. Forget the experience of watching a film to see how it all unfolds in an audio-visual way – if a plot point is revealed in advance, whether it’s through a trailer, an article, or a tweet, the whole thing has been irreversibly ruined. To put it mildly, it’s a completely bananas notion, and it’s going to do some serious damage to how we talk about mainstream entertainment.

With that said, now it’s time for me to be a huge hypocrite.

After its premiere on the festival circuit, I repeatedly heard from trustworthy critical voices that the marketing for Richard Shepard‘s The Perfection basically gave the whole thing away. This was a movie that needed to be experienced without any prior warning, without even the slightest hint of where it would go or why. So, against my better judgment, I took the advice of those critics and avoided the marketing altogether. I never watched the trailer and blocked out all reviews – in fact, I barely knew what it was about beyond the superficial comparisons to Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash. Even as I repeatedly decried everyone’s fear of spoilers to my friends, I committed to going in cold.

By making an exception for a twisty thriller, I received a great reminder of why the element of surprise is supremely overrated in the first place. The Perfection does indeed have plenty of twists and macabre violence, but it’s more shocking and disturbing for just how badly it botches a fascinating idea.

Music School Drama

What can be said about The Perfection that won’t anger those avoiding spoilers? Well, it follows Charlotte (Allison Williams), a former cello prodigy who left her prestigious musical school in order to take care of her dying mother. When Charlotte’s mother finally passes away after this extended illness, she reunites with Anton (Steven Weber) and Paloma (Alaina Huffman), the creative brain trust behind the school that turns raw talent into international glory. Anton and Paloma are currently making the rounds in China, so Charlotte packs her bags and makes the trip.

However, a lot has changed since she last interacted with her world-renowned teachers. When Charlotte left, Lizzie (Logan Browning) arrived at the school, taking the coveted position as Anton’s newest prodigy. Lizzie is now the world-famous star that Charlotte was primed to become, and it seems that the latter may be jealous of the life she left behind. Despite this possible jealousy, the two hit it off, cracking jokes and bonding over their shared experiences as musical students. After serving as judges for Anton’s latest talent search, Charlotte and Lizzie spend the night together.

Stylish Filmmaking Leads to Twisty Excess

The next morning… well, I guess I’ll leave that for you to find out. To be completely honest, I’m not certain that I’m really preserving the experience at all, as writer/director Shepard and co-writers Eric C. Charmelo and Nicole Snyder telegraph all of their big swings pretty far in advance. There’s something to be said for the film’s intense and ever-accelerating spin into fresh and freaky narrative territory, but the thin line between audacious and incomprehensible is crossed multiple times until all consistency is shattered completely.

What does remain consistent is Shepard‘s steadfast commitment to a particular brand of style, where clever camera angles and non-stop split diopter shots create a certain atmosphere that will be familiar to fans of horror thrillers like this one. At first, the flashiness of Shepard‘s compositions is encouraging; how often do we get to see this kind of go-for-broke, ruthlessly inventive (though undoubtedly influenced by the work of genre giants) approach to storytelling? The emphasis on the unmissable diopter shots even holds the very thematic core of the movie, highlighting a duality between these two characters that builds all the way to the (frankly, stupid) final frame. There’s no denying that Shepard put some thought into how to deploy his particular style, and he does it effectively on occasion.

But like any good trick, it’s fun until it isn’t. Before the first act was even fully rolling, I found myself wondering how often Shepard would revert to these stylistic tics. By the time things get wild, it’s clear that the film is only interested in expressing character motivations and narrative developments through the prism of the most obvious directorial decisions possible, riffing on films like Funny Games and Don’t Look Now without delivering much in the way of actual complexity. Split diopters and rapid rewind effects are fun once, but go back to that well too many times and you risk alienating your audience.

Shocking? Sure. Predictable? Absolutely.

But despite my momentary annoyance with some of Shepard‘s more cliched generic predilections, I’m dancing around the truth here a bit. The Perfection‘s greatest sin is not its reliance on diopters or tired devices- if that was the case, this would probably still be a rock solid film. No, the real issue is something much deeper, something much more troubling. Even with the help of a plot that goes in a billion different directions over the course of its 90 minute runtime, this is a predictable film. Every twist, no matter how ludicrous or “shocking,” can be seen from a mile away. It’s a film so concerned with blind-siding its viewers that it forgets how the element of surprise actually works.

In addition to this fundamental flaw, The Perfection seems to have little to no interest in being a consistent film on any level. Once Shepard and company move past the occasionally invigorating opening act, the vast majority of these sharp left turns are utter and complete nonsense. Yes, it’s easy to see them coming, but they’re not motivated by anything but the desire to shock, to leave the viewer screaming “WTF!” while they run to spread the good word on Twitter.

I don’t demand realism from my pulp thrillers, but The Perfection‘s complete disregard for character depth and psychology pushed me in ways I never expected. It’s a character-centric film that has no interest in reckoning with their decisions; why do that when you can just move on to the next shocking setpiece? Once you realize what Shepard is up to by the hour mark (by then, it’s not too hard), it’s difficult not to find yourself groaning repeatedly and loudly, baffled at the idea that any of this would make sense in any recognizable version of reality.

The Perfection: Conclusion

For many, the all-out, borderline absurdity of The Perfection, coupled with its gleeful lack of good taste and its general attitude of extremity, seems to be the chief appeal. Usually, I’m sympathetic to that combination. Here, it’s an incoherent mess, a slapdash affair that combines a multitude of modes and stories without ever considering how these different events present unique and potentially interesting challenges for one another. Rationales get sillier, choices become less and less logical, and the film eventually devolves into a purportedly topical splatter fest that’s more embarrassing than insightful.

It’s intense and it’s got style to spare, but within the confines of a truncated narrative, The Perfection is a film where nothing clicks. Spoilers or not, this one falls flat.

What did you think of The Perfection? Were you a fan of the film’s commitment to extremity and excess? Let us know in the comments below!

The Perfection was released worldwide on Netflix on May 24.