Perfect (Movie Review)

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

PLOT: A homicidal youth is sent to a treatment center that may be able to turn him into a perfect being through bionic implants.

REVIEW: Filmmaker Eddie Alcazar's feature directorial debut is called PERFECT, and while that title does make sense for the story, there's another P-word that's an even better match for the movie: pretentious. And most viewers will need yet another P-word to be able to sit through it: patience. A whole lot of patience. PERFECT may only have an 87 minute running time, but the experience of watching it was so mind-numbing that it felt more like 187 minutes to me.

Scripted by Alcazar and Ted Kupper, the film stars Garrett Wareing as an unnamed young man whose wealthy mother (Abbie Cornish) sends him away to a remote treatment center after he loses control and murders his girlfriend. There doesn't seem to be a threat of any legal ramifications for this murder, the young man just needs to get right and his mother knows there's a chance that spending some time at this treatment center could be beneficial for him, as she was once a patient there herself. We'll soon find that the treatments in this place involve the patients being given self-surgery kits in toy packages. The directions say to slice open their faces and insert bionic implants into the hole – implants that will mutate their perception and "free them from their base programming".

If that story were told in a more straightforward manner, it might have been interesting. It's all in the execution, though, and I found the way Alcazar brought this story to the screen to be maddening. The film put me off with the opening scene, which pairs a nonsensical voice-over with abstract visuals and strobing light that could trigger seizures for some viewers. This goes on for three minutes. PERFECT never drew me back in after that opening.

Those first three minutes are indicative of how PERFECT is going to conduct itself through its entire running time, so you can confidently use that opening scene to decide whether or not you want to continue any deeper into the film. If you like what you see and hear there, PERFECT will probably work for you. If, like me, it already has you cringing at how pretentious it is, abandon ship. More abstract visuals lie ahead, including black & white footage in which the young man has visions of himself as a monstrous creature that torments and murders people. There are many more voice-overs to come, contributed by various characters and often going on about random information (one of the earliest voice-overs is from a character we haven't even met yet, talking about creating automatons) or existential issues. Perfection is deemed horrible, the multiverse is pondered, someone who's not Thanos talks about balance in the universe, we're given a lesson on caterpillars and butterflies. While this is going on, scenes are padded out with excessive slow motion; we even get to watch the lead character eat fruit in slo-mo close-up.

Alcazar makes it very tough for the viewer to decipher what's going on in his story or make any connection at all with the characters, but on the positive side PERFECT is truly visually impressive. Cinematographer Matthias Koenigswieser did a great job capturing the images, most of which were shot at an incredible location that has a CGI-manipulated view. Koenigswieser has promise that Hollywood is taking note of, he shot Disney's recent release CHRISTOPHER ROBIN, and Alcazar also proves with this film that he could be a hell of a visual storyteller. The storytelling part of the equation is just lacking here.

Another positive is the score provided by musician Flying Lotus, who served as an executive producer alongside Steven Soderbergh, whose name is being heavily leaned on to help market the film. "Steven Soderbergh Presents" even appears above the title. It's effective, as Soderbergh's name is how the movie caught my attention.

Basically an 87 minute music video, PERFECT is a cold, experimental arthouse film that will only appeal to a very small audience. It's strictly for viewers who want to get lost in strange, dazzling visuals while listening to Flying Lotus music. Anyone who puts this on hoping to see a movie where they can fully understand what's happening to likeable characters won't find anything they're looking for here. PERFECT wasn't for me at all, but I'm sure it will find an appreciative audience who will be able to get wrapped up in it.

PERFECT will be receiving a theatrical release at New York's Village East Cinemas on May 17th and at L.A.'s Laemmle Ahrya Fine Arts on May 24th. It will then get a VOD launch exclusively at Breaker.io on June 21st.