The Perfection Starts Well But Plunges Into A Mutilated Monstrosity

 The Perfection(Netflix)

Starring Allison Williams, Logan Browning

Directed  by  Richard Shepard

Rating: *( 1 star)

 This  is  a horror film that  could have been so much more than what it  eventually  turns into:  a grisly  nauseating  amputation and  mutilation  binge, all  tied together by the  music  of the cello  that finally seems ironically incongruous  to  the  progressively  perverse  tone of  the narrative  .

 At first it isn’t  so. Two young beautiful  classical  musicians meet and  fall  in love in bustling esoteric  Shanghai. It is when  they take off on a  bus trip through rural  China that  all hell breaks loose. Lizzie(Logan Browning) falls  violently ill  . Her  growing panic  is  marvelously recorded  in  the responses  of  the  other  bus passengers—from kind to frightened  to cruel– as well as in her  friend lover and travelling companion Charlotte(Allison  Williams) who  seems at first panicked and then strangely smug.

 So far it isn’t difficult to guess what is going on here. Envy in the world of western  classical  music dates back to Mozart and Salieri. But we soon  realize  that the makers of this  lowbrow  house of horrors  aims at a much lower  blow than what the world of classicism suggests.

Rapidly,  the  screenplay changes tracks and  the  film becomes  a vendetta saga .Child abuse and sexual violence creep into  the  plot with vengeful  intensity.And the journey from horror to pulp is  embarrassing , to say the  least.  Quite honestly, the  film grows  progressively creepy  in tone and  the way the  girls  at the posh music school  are treated shows  a complete lack  of sensitivity not only among  the  predators  on screen  but also  in  the   writer and  director of this   pulpy perversity  of   film.

The  Perfection  appears to abuse the sensitive theme  of  child abuse.

The  two principal performances  by  Allison Williams  and Logan Browning work within  the  script’s  twisted  requirements. The  two young actresses  seem to have a far larger appetite for the ghoulish and  the foolish than we  the  audience.

 Without  giving away the  grating  finale ,suffice to say the sight of  a  perverted naked aging man  creeping up  on young girls playing the cello is  enough  to make you throw up.

Puke, by the way, plays  a pivotal  part  in the script.As does  puke with  maggots  crawling in it.Limbs being chopped off with   gleaming  steel instruments is another favourite method of  torture in this sadistic show of brute power.

Not recommended  for the weak-hearted.  Or for that matter  for  anybody.