CHICAGO — Filmmaker and University of Illinois Chicago film professor Jennifer Reeder’s fourth feature, “Perpetrator,” is described this way in the program of the Berlin International Film Festival, where the thriller makes its world premiere:
“On her 18th birthday, tough-girl Jonny eats a cake baked by her aunt according to a magical family recipe and goes through a radical metamorphosis. As several classmates go missing, a bloody coming-of-age story takes its course.”
The course rarely runs smoothly in Reeder’s filmography, which has been described as half David Lynch, half John Hughes. It’s driven by fierce young women; huge, bruising emotions; and a vision of American suburbia full of brightly colored, darkly subterranean mysteries.
