Tuesday, April 7, 2020

The Perfection (2018)

I… uh… you know, I don’t have an intro for this. Just read on and I’ll explain what this is.

Director: Richard Shepard
Starring: Allison Williams, Logan Browning

Co-written with Michelle.

This one starts off with a girl named Charlotte, whose mother has died and so she can finally go back to playing the cello like she always wanted. She meets her teacher’s new protege, Lizzie, who has been in the New York Times, so that’s cool. Then through a rapid-fire series of scenes of them playing the cello, they drink together and then have sex and are in a relationship enough to go to China together!

Well, you can say a lot of things about musicians. Apparently they move fucking fast. Charlotte says this is the first time she’s ever had sex, since she spent so much time with her dying mother for years. Well, so far so good. I’m sure this will just be a movie about a romance. How sweet.

In China, the two almost immediately have problems when Lizzie starts getting sick. It quickly begins to escalate when they’re on a bus in the middle of nowhere and Lizzie begins to vomit up worms. She wonders if she has that virus that had been reported in China (… you know, I’m not going there for this), and, no, my friend, what you have is apparently much fucking worse. Vomiting up worms – this is some Exorcist shit.

So, OK. It’s a body-horror flick. Cool.

Then the bus driver kicks them off and they just have to wander around in the middle of the mountains with Lizzie dying. She sees bugs exploding out of her arm and Charlotte then immediately produces a giant meat cleaver out of nowhere and goes “you know what you have to do!” Uh, anyone who carries around a fucking meat cleaver and just pulls it out at the ready is nobody I want to be around.

But then the movie ‘rewinds’ itself in a very weird and stupid manner to SHOW US WHAT REALLY HAPPENED! Apparently, Charlotte actually got some hallucinogenics and slipped them to Lizzie, suggesting subtly that bugs were in her skin. Then she also stole a meat cleaver from a restaurant just for the right time to use. This is some psycho shit, man. The character from Single White Female is going “wow, that’s fucked.” Why’d she have to go all the way to China to do this? How did she know the bus driver would just abandon them? I have so many questions. If they had taken her to a hospital, none of it would’ve worked and the whole plan would’ve been shot. I guess it’s just dumb.

So, OK… now I guess it’s a weird revenge/sociopath type of story! Cool! Are you done trying on different genres of films like it’s a department clothing store? I mean, Jesus Christ, this has more personalities than the homeless guy down the street from me.

Then we flash forward a few weeks to back in America, as Lizzie shows up at the music school like a lost orphan with one hand. The teacher, Anton, immediately shows no regard for her well-being at all and basically kicks her out for losing her hand. What a class act! “You suffered a traumatic injury, now GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SIGHT!” This is the kind of guy who grades child cancer patients’ drawings as ‘mediocre at best.’ What a douche!

So instead, she goes and fights Charlotte at her house in the suburbs – wait, so Charlotte’s whole big plan went like:

1. Go trick girl into sleeping with you.
2. Go to China and drug her and make her cut off her own hand!
3. Go home and live in a suburban home and do nothing.

What a plan! She sure is keeping busy these days. I guess it’s good to have a full calendar. That’s the spice of life.

Then Lizzie kidnaps Charlotte and takes her back to the music mansion where Anton the weirdo music teacher just invites them both back in. It’s revealed through some weird flashbacks that, actually, this music school is a weird rape cult where the teacher makes you have sex with him if you mess up the music! What a twist! We also learn that Charlotte was apparently institutionalized before, likely because of the rape cult stuff, and had electroshock therapy.

What a tasteful plot. I’m glad this movie is really shining a light on the plight of sexual assault victims by showing us a bunch of sensational gaudy bullshit twists. Actually it's trash and uses heavy subjects as fodder to be shocking and garish, making it really very immature.

Like this shit is crazy – Anton and his goons, with Lizzie on their side, have Charlotte shackled to a chair and threaten to rape a little girl if she doesn’t do well. What the fuck am I even watching? Who wrote this down and said ‘yeah, makes sense’?

Eventually, we get the OTHER big twist – that Charlotte and Lizzie had actually teamed up to beat Anton, tricking him into thinking HE had the upper hand!

Christ, this movie is full of twists. It’s like three different movies; a romance, a body horror film and then a rape revenge film. I’m not opposed to the genre switching, but the way the movie keeps on throwing twists in and then retconning everything before it makes this a very frustrating viewing. It's not clever if all you're doing is going "oh, yeah, that thing you thought happened? That didn't happen. I'm smart because my mom said so!" Just tell the fucking story!

But yeah – Charlotte and Lizzie team up and kill Anton, eventually severing all his limbs and making him watch them play the cello together. Just imagine clicking on this part as a random point in the movie after seeing the beginning with the two girls kissing and sleeping together. I know that’s not a hard hitting critique, but man is it funny to imagine.

Also, Charlotte apparently did all the stuff about cutting off Lizzie’s hand to save her from the brainwashing of the rape cult thing. I wonder if she EVER just tried talking to Lizzie calmly about it before pulling off that whole scheme. That would be my big problem if I was in Lizzie’s shoes. “Uh, you couldn’t have just talked to me about the brainwashing and the rape cult over our morning coffee? There was no point where you could’ve brought it up civilly? You had to jump straight to CUTTING OFF MY FUCKING HAND???”

But then, that’s our Charlotte – always such a cheeky rascal!

I just wonder why Charlotte had to do everything the way she did. Couldn't she just have killed Anton immediately at the beginning? That would have probably been easier. Or better yet, find some way to expose him or something. So much could've been avoided, including loss of limbs and PTSD-related trauma. But I guess it was more fun to do the whole hand-cutting-off, rape-revenge elaborate plot!

This movie is terribly bad, but I just find it more fascinating than anything. What brain mash thought this crazy shit up? I want to study it under a microscope and find out what secrets lie within. Maybe it could cure cancer.

Image copyright of its original owner; I don't own it.

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