“The Room.” “Sharknado.” “Unforgettable.” So-bad-it’s-good has been its own beloved subgenre of film for centuries, with cult followings only gaining steam thanks to the bacteria-like dissemination inherent in social media. If you can meme it, you can bond over it, you can try to solve it. How did this get made? Did that actor know what she was doing when she delivered that line that way? How did a crew of hundreds of people contribute to this, unashamed? The journey to these answers is often as delightful as the bad movie-watching itself. Other times, we viewers ask these questions out of sheer, gut-twisting, muscle-clenching rage. I am here now to ask those responsible for “The Perfection,” a new film co-produced by Netflix and Miramax, some questions.
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For context, the plot: Charlotte (Alison Williams), fresh from her mother’s death, tracks down the music school of her youth and meets its new young protégé, Elizabeth (Logan Browning). The two share an immediate sexual attraction, but their intertwined, abusive pasts – and Charlotte’s questionable mental stability – complicate the relationship considerably.
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Now, a few queries for Netflix: How deep are your pockets, exactly? What niche audience are you trying to reach with a slapped-together body horror drama about child rape? Why now? Why this movie? Did you make Logan Browning sign a blood oath when she started on “Dear White People” that would later compel her to give the OK to this script, where she (literally) shits her pants and delivers lines like, “I have the bitch”?
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For director and co-writer Richard Shepard: Did you know that, if you’re going to make a sly, self-referential film, the joke stops being funny when you make child rape a main plot mechanic? Were you aware that it’s impossible to film a campy, fun attempted rape scene – yes, even if the characters are in on it, you sly dog! – because of the entire sociopolitical history of rape as an act of violence specifically perpetrated against women? Have you cracked a book, read a paper, or watched the news at any point in the last five years? Have you ever met a human woman in your entire life? (This one is rhetorical – I know you’re partnered with Jenni Konner. Yikes!)
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For Nicole Snyder (a co-writer, along with Eric C. Charmelo), and every other woman who worked on this movie: Why?
Today, serial sexual abuse and women’s bodily autonomy are dire topics for most. Apparently, for the team behind “The Perfection,” those real-life horrors are just more fun genre fare. While the first two-thirds of “The Perfection” are a competent (if lazy) homage to Park Chan-wook’s campy suspense epic “The Handmaiden,” this film’s final act treats sexual violence against women and girls with the same level of unbridled delight. The result is a show of horror movie misogyny so galling it surely has Alfred Hitchcock beaming down in hell.
While Harvey Weinstein has had no professional link to Miramax for over a decade, he is, as its co-founder, inextricably tied up in its pop cultural image. The question, “How did this get made?” thus becomes doubly vexing – surely someone at Miramax saw this film, in which an older man accused of serial sexual abuse pleads for mercy because he is “sick” and just needs to “get help,” and noticed the Weinstein parallels. Either this movie was made due to one of the most humongous creative blind spots in all of filmmaking, or it was made because in this, the year 2019, there are still people who believe that eroticized, lightened-up rape scenes are not only permissable – they are empowering.
Either way, audiences everywhere will be thankful for Netflix’s “back” button. [F]
