Women and Queerness in Horror: The Perfection

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Perfection, mentions of sex and violence, mentions of self-harm, and mentions of child sexual abuse and rape.

Last week, I talked about the meandering, lesbian-fear-inflected Single White Female. I went into all the ways it could have worked but didn’t. This week, I turn to a film that actually does have queer women in mind: The Perfection.

Now, I’ll admit, before jumping in to watch it, I was wary. I’d been putting it off, mostly because I was aware of the infamous scene with the bugs. I put it off to steer around the hype that rippled out and flooded my social media in the immediate wake of The Perfection’s release, too. Whether I ended up liking or disliking it, I knew I would end up rubbing someone the wrong way.

I was also dodging it because I wasn’t at all confident in a movie about the more fraught, alternately intense and frightening side of queer desire being directed by a (as far as I can tell) straight man, Richard Shepard. In doing research for this article, though, I also found out that Eric C. Charmelo, one of the three co-writers of the script, is an openly gay man. As per my experience with Single White Female, that’s not necessarily a hall-pass to write sensitively about queer women. However, having listened to a podcast interview with him about his writing process and how his identity enters into it, I was at a little reassured. Yet I was still mentally preparing for some uncomfortably male-gazey notes.

On the other hand, though, controversial as it may be to say, I don’t necessarily always need my queer representation to be “good.” In this sense, “good” has often meant sanitized and “safe,” because getting financial backing for a movie or show with a gay couple in it can be very difficult if they ever fight. It often doesn’t allow them talk to each other like people, have weird sex, or it prevents them from acting like straight people, just in a gay relationship. Heaven forbid they have personalities and experiences that, while of course mediated by their queerness, aren’t about being queer, 24/7.

Meanwhile, straight couples on TV or in movies often get to meander through weeks if not months of ecstatic, soapy drama. All this while queer characters can only be mean, messy, or behave badly. They then are often required to be prepared to be crucified and forced to bow and scrape in order to atone for their sins. Also, they can only talk about being gay. This just in, queer sexuality is a personality trait, and it’s our only personality trait. Sorry. I’m contractually obligated to only speak if it’s about my bisexuality. I must have forgotten.

Moving on. What I need from my queer representation is that it be honest, and yes, sometimes that means going to weird and even dark places. An example of this that comes to mind is, of course, Bryan Fuller’s work on Hannibal. Hannibal is a textbook case of a gay man reveling in writing the dark, twists-and-turns, of both literally and figuratively consumptive queer courtship we’re rarely allowed to fantasize about. This is rarely allowed because we have to be pristinely packaged. Also, our sex is bad unless it’s got the stamp of approval from straight people. Okay, granted, Will and Hannibal haven’t slept together on screen, but I will bet any of you ten dollars right now that they would have if Bryan Fuller had had his way on that one, too.

The Perfection, then, falls into a similar vein. This is not a fantasy in the sense of an ideal, in the sense of something people should actually aspire to in their relationships. It is, however, a fantasy of an unfettered queerness, something unapologetic and without condition. Something that understands women (and queer folk) are neither saints, nor monsters but sometimes both.

It understands that they are more often something in between. It ushers forth a pattern of queer desire, sex, longing, tenderness, resentment, confusion, deceit, and fear that resonated with something honest, at least for me. Was I still wary of the writing room not necessarily being the right people to helm that story? Absolutely. Yet I had heard enough positive things from queer film critics and analysts to give it a shot.

I should, however, mention here that the queer currents of The Perfection haven’t been well-received by everyone. I definitely understand why. As much as I felt the story engaging with things and pulling on strings I rarely if ever talk about, I think it also flirts with linking queerness, trauma, and manipulation in ways that may be (and are) hard to stomach. Mileage, indeed, also varies on the positioning of the film as an entry into the rape-revenge subgenre. Some felt it played into familiar and harmful tropes of surviving sexual violence making women “stronger,” while others felt it directly played against those tropes.

I get it. The desire to see queer relationships on screen that are healthy and offer growth and fulfillment, is strong in me too. I just think it’s important to not approach The Perfection with that expectation. It’s equal parts love story and rape-revenge thriller. However, like the courtship between Bryan Fuller’s Lecter and Graham, I don’t think the romance at its core was ever intended to be something that queer viewers should aspire to or want for themselves.

I also understand the burnout on the use of sexual violence against women and girls as a plot device in rape-revenge stories. This may be especially the case regarding movies that are written and directed by men though. These often end up playing the rape scenes for titillation rather than as the horrifying experiences they are and should be.

To say, in 2020, that I can like rape-revenge movies is a controversial thing to say. No doubt, some are definitely executed irretrievably badly. Nonetheless, I think there are two categories of viewers here. My feelings about straight men enjoying the sexualized brutalization of female bodies are fairly unequivocally negative. On the other hand, my feelings about sexual violence survivors embracing the catharsis of survivors retaliating against those that have harmed them is another matter altogether.

I shouldn’t feel obligated to present my trauma credentials to render me liking a piece of media permissible, but here we go anyway; I have survived sexual violence, by both men and women, some of which when I was a minor. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s dive in. Early in the movie, Allison Williams’ character Charlotte first reappears to meet with Anton. Anton is played by Steven Weber, who I have now seen naked two weeks in a row when I didn’t need to; no thanks to Single White Female. Charlotte meets with Anton and his wife Paloma (Alaina Huffman) after her mother’s death. In this moment she is visibly nervous, even uncomfortable. At this early stage in the film, based on what little we know, it’s easy to interpret this as simply her being nervous that she might not be accepted back by her previous mentors.

However, given what we learn later, we retrospectively understand that Charlotte has deliberately reinserted herself into a triggering context in an attempt to regain some kind of control over what was done to her. The fact that this scene isn’t played with a seamless confidence but rather with a damp-eyed, fluttery fractiousness pokes holes in the “abuse makes you stronger” myth. This is a refreshing push back against conventional rape-revenge that will come up several times in the movie. Indeed, Charlotte is both desperate for belonging and paralyzed when she caves to the social expectation to hug Anton, which resonates with the intensely ambivalent, divided feelings one can have about one’s abuser. This scene is also carefully framed to put what appear to be Charlotte’s self-harm scars on display.

Clearly, all is not well. This is also probably a good point to mention one of my few real criticisms of The Perfection, something most of the reviews I read left out. I’m pretty sure the majority of the audience knew, or could figure out, what the scars were. I don’t think it contributed anything to actually show flashback sequences of a younger Charlotte cutting herself in the tub. We get it. That imagery being tossed in without so much as Netflix providing a content warning isn’t required to make the point you’re going for.

Moving on, tension builds as the scene progresses into Anton’s speech about a competition being hosted. The winner of the competition will secure a place at the renowned Bachoff Academy as a new cello student. At this point, the camera pans to three nervously eager young girls who — like any audience members who started watching this movie without knowing about its plot — clearly have no idea what this actually entails.

Indeed, entering this movie entirely blind plays this scene with essentially the same level of pressure and intensity as Black Swan’s pursuit of the lead role in Swan Lake. Yet it does not immediately bleed into the sinister. For those of us watching that knew what was yet to come, however, it quickly evoked a chilly sense of dread without needing to try. If the competition was going to happen no matter what anyone did, I wanted those young girls to lose.

When Lizzie (Logan Browning) is unveiled during Anton’s speech, Charlotte immediately and visibly reacts. Given the fraught tension underlying the scene — and my familiarity with Allison Williams’ quietly but pointedly sinister role in Get Out — it was easy to interpret her wide-eyed, tight-jawed snapping to attention as a display of threatening jealousy. Personally, I think this framing was very deliberate. Of course, as we later learn, the reality of the situation is nothing so simple.

What follows is only the first of many steps along the path of these two women’s proceeding courtship, or even seduction. Anton introduces the two to each other, and the filmic technique shifts fairly soon. It brings the two women into sharp relief in the foreground, though they have exhausted their spoken lines and are only looking at each other.

They are appraising, smiling, clearly attracted to each other. Anton’s rambling on is faded into the background, with his visual blurred out and his spoken lines muted, though not altogether silenced. Later, when the two women meet again outside (this time without Anton present) the conversation takes a turn for something that is at once more honest and more calculated. Charlotte works around to asking if Lizzie would ever consider leaving the Bachoff Academy, a seemingly innocuous question.

However, with what we learn later, it clearly opens for reinterpretation as Charlotte trying to gauge how far “in” to the system Lizzie has been pulled, and how far she thinks she might have to go to break her out of it. We come to understand that Lizzie is still heavily embroiled in (and is in denial about) the machinations of abuse taking place at Bachoff. She even goes so far as to parrot both Anton and Paloma, saying, “It’s what’s expected of us.”

Nonetheless, it’s in the wake of this conversation that Lizzie asks Charlotte to go dancing with her. We know this is far from a platonic request, given their flirty posturing as they watched the preceding “competition,” and the way Lizzie touches Charlotte’s face and hair when her invitation is accepted. However, before they’re free to leave, Anton prevails upon them — despite Charlotte’s protests that she’s out of practice — to perform a duet together, to round off the evening’s events.

Eventually, they do so, and the initial presumed notes of a tense, jealous rivalry dissipate. The duet itself is thickly charged with a burgeoning attraction between the two women. This only grows when it intercuts with scenes of Lizze and Charlotte dancing, kissing, and having sex. The duet is a narrative vehicle for their seduction, and dare I say I’m pretty sure many a queer woman musician had to take a minute to recover.

As I mentioned, I was conscious of the risks of a male director’s gaze here and the absence of queer women from the screenwriting process. I don’t think those concerns were entirely unfounded. However, these sequences were more astute and sensitive than I was expecting. There were more lingering shots of faces and hands than of other body parts. It was intimate. It felt honest and charged and, unlike when I’ve watched a sex scene between two women that was clearly framed for straight men, I didn’t feel guilty afterward.

It helped that they talk about it afterward. There was something refreshingly natural about the conversation that followed, with Lizzie and Charlotte lying in bed together, naked. They were not awkwardly draped in sheeting the way no one I’ve ever known has been after sex and were openly talking. The two women honestly discuss what they’ve just done together and their previous sexual experiences, seemingly without drama or artifice.

They’re existing in their own (and each other’s) spaces while talking about their queerness, neither making it a bigger deal than it is nor avoiding it. I sighed in relief at that presentation. Subsequently, Lizzie invites Charlotte to accompany her on an intended road trip across what appear to be more remote or rural stretches of China to the west of the very coastal Shanghai. In other words … she asks her to travel across the entire country. I won’t get into a geographical gripe here. Let’s move on.

Lizzie’s invitation may seem like a bit of a weird gesture to extend to someone you’ve only recently met and only slept with once. Indeed, it’s certainly a little contrived to allow the movie to achieve its goal. We hear Lizzie emphasize her intentions to “unplug from everyone and everything” and as we eventually discover, this (of course) lines up perfectly with Charlotte’s need to get Lizzie alone.

What follows, despite being framed through the horror lens with vomit and other bodily fluids abounding, does resonate in some way with an unfolding of queer intimacy that doesn’t abide by or respect expected timelines. They have sex first. There’s no coffee date in sight, then they go on a road trip. Also, please clean Lizzie up after she’s been violently ill. Oh, is this only date two? Don’t worry about it, Charlotte used to do this all the time when her mom got sick. Here, have her tragic backstory.

Clearly, this isn’t a courtship that’s obeying any kind of structural rules of how relationships are “supposed” to go. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it is something queer audience members might have connected with. Certainly, any of my successful queer relationships happened “in the wrong order.”

It’s those attempts at dating women and nonbinary folk that tried to follow an expected (read: “this is what straight people do, apparently”) pattern of getting to know each other over coffee or a drink that fizzled into nothing. Obviously, though, The Perfection is presenting an extreme, campy-horror version of this. I’ve never thrown up on any of my dates. Still, you get the point.

Of course, all is not that simple. We learn not long after this that Charlotte has orchestrated pretty much the whole ordeal. While some of the precise details have been put together on the fly, the broad strokes were there. Get Lizzie alone, then give her Charlotte’s deceased mother’s medication. The medication has known side effects being itching and hallucinations, which are exacerbated by a combination with alcohol.

Then, plant suggestions of very specific hallucinations that will eventually steer Lizzie to amputate her dominant hand so that she won’t be accepted back at the Bachoff Academy. Point taken: this part of the movie definitely alienated some viewers. It takes what appeared to be an earnest, sweet queer romance and tossed that out the window as Charlotte deliberately navigates Lizzie through an increasing scale of gaslighting. Good intentions or not, I completely understand why it turned some audience members off.

From where I approached the movie though, I think it was a deliberate remarking on the very limited, highly damaged emotional vocabulary Charlotte has. We have to remember that she was groomed into this system from a young age. Even after she left, she essentially only had her very ill mother for company when she was not being shipped in and out of psychiatric institutions. I don’t think it was inadvertent that the film has her replicating some parts of the cycle she herself was brutalized through, leading her to harm Lizzie in a poorly executed attempt to communicate with her.

Once Lizzie manages to return home, after some initial concern and pity from Anton and Paloma, she soon finds out they are kicking her out of the Academy. They reason that she can no longer be of “use” to them due to her injury. Her reaction reverberates with the cycles of abuse, too. It echoes both the desperation to “do what’s expected” and “play through the pain” in order to be accepted and deemed worthy, first of all. Furthermore, it also mirrors instances where women have come to the defense of alleged abusers in positions of power out of either willful ignorance or deliberate denial. It tends to happen out of fear that they will lose the ability to “stay relevant” in a damaging, predatory industry.

Indeed, this is also the scene in which any suspicions that Paloma might have been dragged into complicity are confirmed. The implications between lines like “This is a music conservatory, not a convalescent home” and “We have other girls to house and train” are stark and glaring. We feel Lizzie’s revulsion and hurt and anger in realizing that Paloma has not simply been a victim of this abusive, predatory system but has knowingly enabled its perpetuation.

This awareness is further complicated when we learn from Anton in a flashback, that this pattern of abuse has been happening for generations. The Bachoff Academy has existed since 1927, founded by Anton’s grandfather. ANton heavily implies that he and his assistants, Theis and Geoffrey, have also been sexually abused.

I do have to wonder if there was a follow-up to this idea that ended up getting cut from the script. I was somewhat stranded and unsure how to feel about that, given that Theis and Geoffrey then proceed to attempt a violent rape of Charlotte anyway. Still, my doubts about its necessity aside, I think it was trying to say something about inter-generational abuse cycles in a way that reflects the patterns of inherited abuse within institutions. Nonetheless, this matter is tied up neatly, for better or worse, as the enablers and participants (Theis, Geoffrey, and Paloma) each die before Charlotte can come to any further harm. This comes with the revelation that Lizzie and Charlotte are in cahoots. This clears their path to confront Anton once and for all.

What I found particularly interesting (and refreshing) in this scene is, specifically, the filmic technique used to put it together. By switching point of view to focus on tight shots of Charlotte’s face, using a shoulder-mounted camera; we follow her emotional journey rather than following the violence being inflicted on Anton itself. This brings home the intention of which Allison Williams has spoken, which was to depict Charlotte deliberately reinserting herself into “the location of the greatest traumas of her entire life […] in order to make things right in her moral universe.”

The Perfection does this without oversimplifying the context as something straightforwardly “badass.” As Williams herself has explained, “The goal was to watch someone who’s leaving and then returning to her body multiple times.” in the same scene. She is finding some kind of catharsis and vindication for what was done to her. She is also being re-traumatized in the same moment, and the intensity of the scene comes down to “the terror of those two things fighting each other.”

Instead of focusing on the violence itself, the scene emphasizes what it means for Charlotte to witness it, as it is in fact Lizzie that lands most of the blows on Anton. Instead of creating a scene that presents as an unambiguous and unequivocal good, we confront a reality in which Charlotte “hopes it will be triumphant, but it’s also scarier and more real than she ever imagined.” Indeed, it is scary for her not only to witness and participate in this violence, but also to watch the trauma that has trapped her for years suddenly be pulled apart at the seams, and have to figure out how to redefine herself on the other side of it.

All of this is communicated in a series of what I can only call face journeys traded between Lizzie and Charlotte, with very little dialogue in between and only a couple very brief shots of Anton himself. I found this to be a refreshing change of pace that chose to prioritize their emotional landscapes and thought processes over following conventional action and splashy gore. It didn’t shy from the gravitas of violent revenge, thus grounding the catharsis in something that felt real.

Was The Perfection a perfect movie, no pun intended? No. There are a couple moments I could have done without. Still, our leads are alive and united by the end, for one thing. More importantly, perhaps, this might be the first time I’ve felt seen and cared about as a queer survivor of sexual trauma who’s attracted to women, in a movie that borrows from older entries into the exploitation and rape-revenge subgenres. For those who feel able to handle its potentially triggering content, I can honestly recommend watching it at least once.