Editorials
The Ferocity and Necessity of Shapeshifting with ‘Perpetrator’ (2023)
Sometimes, we need to shift our shape in order to fully embody our true form. Shifting lies at the core of our survival. It invites us to dive way down into the very blood that courses through our veins, tuning into the primal elements within the memories of our cells.
Echoes reverberate from the past, screaming and gnashing their way to the surface – all too eager to deliver the sheer force of life we can become when we embrace that which we’ve been burying in the darkness.
When we choose to face and embrace what makes us whole, the entire world tells us that our truth is exactly what makes us wrong. Makes us unacceptable.
Makes us monsters, even.
In Jennifer Reeder’s 2023 bloodbath battle cry, Perpetrator, Jonquil “Jonny” Baptiste is a teenager just trying to survive in dire circumstances.
Resorting to theft to support herself and her deadbeat father, Jonny’s left wondering where her mother disappeared to – a mother she’s never met. As Jean Baptiste says, “Young women disappear all the time. It’s not that uncommon.”
She’s just… gone, leaving Jonny with more questions than answers, not just about her mother, but about herself.
As Jonny approaches her 18th birthday, she’s shipped off to stay with her Aunt Hildie – a family member she’s never met. Special family, who will guide Jonny through a world of primordial becoming and ancestral reclamation; of shapeshifting – with the help of a birthday cake containing a deep, decadent, crimson filling.
The cake holds “fuel for the fury,” to help usher Jonny along her newfound path – a path nothing could have prepared her for, but a path she must follow, nonetheless.
“I call it Forevering,” Hildie tells her. “It’s profound spectral empathy. You are one in a long line. We are proxies, surrogates, mimics, mirrors. We turn, we fake. We follow, we bend. We shift, we shape. We tune way in.”
This shift… this transformation catapults Jonny into the throes of madness, ferociousness, hysteria, and mania. An almost hallucinogenic trance thrusts her into an animalistic state, one that is terrifying and mystifying and fascinating.
“A kind of possession in reverse. We are women feeling all the feelings,” says Hildie, ruminating on the bottomless well of possibility this becoming bestows upon the women of their bloodline.
A bloodline roaring with centuries of power, persecution, fear, ferocity, of shifting back or forward – elevated to a being of intuition and instinct; to fascination, fluidity and wonder. To neither here nor there, but something totally unique. Something special. Something powerful. Something ferocious. Something magnificent.
Sometimes, accepting our own uniqueness and power can lead to miraculous things. Sometimes, just being ourselves can inspire others to do the same.
Sometimes, being ourselves can save lives.
When we tune way in, it’s a song only blood can sing that we hear. It’s our pulse, reverberating through our hearts and heads. It’s the chthonic river running through us, informing us. Because the blood is the key. Blood in the cake, blood in the toilet, blood flowing and pooling and taking shape, creating a portal that invites Jonny in to plumb the depths of the specters that lie in the deep.
A girl, screaming, lost. One from a group of teenage girls who has gone missing recently, all from the private school that Jonny is now attending – the same school where Aunt Hildie was once a student.
A school led by an eccentric male principal who is obsessed with training the girls how to fight- how to hide – because there’s danger all around them, and even though it seems bad, it can get so, so much worse.
“Escape. Evade. Engage. Most of you are going to die today.”
If Jonny decided to turn away from her gifts, from her new super powers, things may have gotten worse – but she chose herself. She chose to get curious, to be present, to flex her new sense of awareness and reach down and out, watching her face take on the face of one of the missing girls; watching that girl’s eyes shine through hers; listening, as that girl’s voice spoke through her lips.
She exercised her sensitivity and empathy to shift in order to find the lost teenagers. And with the help of her new girlfriend, Elektra, she is able to uncover the one common denominator between all of her kidnapped classmates – the guy who plays all the sports. The guy who’s a good kisser. The guy who all the girls had been with before they were taken. Kirk.
By becoming one of Kirk’s “girls,” she places herself in the crosshairs of the perpetrator.
Male domination; male aggression; male desperation – this is what Jonny awakens to in the lair of the beast.
A mask and apron obscure a grown man who is siphoning Jonny’s blood – the power, the life – into his own body.
When she rejects him, he becomes unbridled, spewing incel rants and knocking Jonny unconscious. She awakens in the room where he’s been keeping the girls everyone is looking for.
Once again, Jonny summons the blood, and once again, a portal is created. A place where she could find protection and support – an ally. The perpetrator couldn’t resist the allure of this bubbling pool, and he was immediately pulled, shoved, and kicked down into the thick abyss.
The abyss that held him long enough for Jonny and her classmates to make their escape. The abyss that held eons of pain and punishment and ostracization, all fueling its fire as it freed Jonny and her friends from the grips of one in a long line of sadistic madmen.
Jonny and the girls were under attack for being who and what they were. They were under attack by someone who felt so weak and less than just by being in their presence. They were under attack by someone who was threatened by their very essence – their very truth.
In the end, Aunt Hildie gathered those girls together for a very special cake, inviting them into a lineage of community, protection, and solidarity; of shifting from one state to another. A space where they could listen, learn, grow, explore and empower each other, together.
Shapeshifters have existed since the dawn of time. It’s a birthright that’s been stripped through denial, persecution and oppression in the name of patriarchy, conformity and rigidity.
Reclaiming this state of being is a sovereign cry of preservation and protection – of belonging and community in whatever way that looks and feels right to any one of us. As the Summer Solstice approaches, allow this culmination of life – this shift from dormant to verdant – to inspire you.
The earth is transforming, coming into, and feeling itself. Nature takes its own cues and abides by its own rules. It knows itself.
It survives by being exactly what it is – nothing more, nothing less. It accepts its ancient strengths and wisdom and knowledge. It feeds its thrumming pulse, the very same pulse that feeds and fuels us.
The earth shifts with the seasons, shedding and emerging over and over again. We, too, shift. We shed. We emerge. We create new skin to hold us through each season, and are free to change. Free to be. Free to own ourselves and our inherent radiance and ferocity in any shape or form they take. That’s for us to decide, because this is a lifelong road we’re all traveling.
There will always be pressures to ignore our intuition, to doubt ourselves, to either blend or isolate in the name of acceptance – of survival. But by honoring those parts of ourselves that others protest, we’re building our intuition. We’re building self-belief.
We foster taking up space and being seen. We create acceptance where there was once none. By choosing ourselves, over and over and over again, we become more like Jonny; we become more like Aunt Hildie. We become more like ourselves, and that’s the strongest, most powerful, most beautiful creature we could ever be.
You can stream Perpetrator now on Shudder!
The United States spent most of this year celebrating its 250th anniversary. There have been parades, fireworks, and endless reminders of what the nation wants us to think are its founding ideals. Yet anniversaries are as much about what we choose to remember as they are about what we choose to forget. There is another anniversary this year. Five years ago this month, Candyman was released. The fact that both that film and America are sharing an anniversary this year may have been an accident, but that makes it no less significant.
Released amid another national reckoning over race, Nia DaCosta’s film asks a question that every celebration of America ought to confront: Is it possible to commemorate this nation without fully reckoning with the violence woven into its history? More than a sequel to a horror classic, Candyman is a meditation on the ghosts that haunt America because it has never fully reckoned with the past that created them.
How the Original Candyman Confronted America’s Racial History
The original Candyman understood this. Released in 1992 and set in the almost post-apocalyptic urban decay that was Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Bernard Rose’s film arrived only months after the L.A. Race Riots, a moment when this country was coming to terms with the way the country’s relationship with Black folks was shaped by decades of segregation and racism.
Most audiences saw a supernatural slasher about a hook-handed killer summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror. But beneath the horror was a far more unsettling story. Candyman was about the lingering consequences of America’s racial history and the way white America has sometimes turned Black suffering into myth instead of confronting the systems that produced it.
The film’s true horror was never simply Candyman. It was the realization that monsters can be born from histories a nation refuses to face. That is exactly where the 2021 film expands the original’s vision.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman Turns One Ghost Into Many
Bernard Rose’s Candyman explored the legacy of a single act of racist terror. Nia DaCosta’s film argues that the tragedy wasn’t confined to Daniel Robitaille, the man who became the monster. The 2021 film posits that Candyman is not one man but many.
Daniel Robitaille was lynched for loving a white woman. Sherman Fields takes on the mantle of the supernatural slasher because he was beaten to death by police after being falsely accused of harming a child. Anthony McCoy ultimately becomes part of the same legend. Their stories span generations, but they are connected by a nation that repeatedly produces the same injustice under different names at different points in history. The genius of the sequel is that it transforms Candyman from an individual ghost into a symbol of America’s recurring racial violence.
Candyman Shows How History Repeats Itself
History, the film suggests, is not something that happened once. It is something that keeps happening. That is why Candyman is one of my favorite films to teach in my Film and Philosophy course.
Students walk into class expecting a horror movie. They leave wrestling with questions about history, memory, and justice. We spend little time talking about jump scares or gore. (Because, let’s be honest, there is not much of that in the film.) Instead, we ask why some histories become legends while others are forgotten, what societies owe their victims, and whether a nation can ever move forward without honestly confronting the violence that shaped it.
The Horror of Remembering What America Wants to Forget
A good horror film reveals what we fear. What makes Candyman great is how it reveals what we would rather not remember. That is what haunted me the first time I saw it, long after the credits had rolled.
Five years after its release, Candyman remains one of the most unsettling movies in recent years because the history it confronts is not safely behind us. The original film understood that America’s racial violence could not simply be buried, while the 2021 film showed how easily that violence can be reproduced across generations.
Its Unquestionable Legacy in Horror
As America celebrates 250 years, Candyman reminds us that commemorating the nation’s founding requires remembering all this country’s history, including the parts that make the celebration uncomfortable.
We cannot exorcise a ghost by refusing to acknowledge why it exists. Perhaps that is the film’s most important lesson. The past does not haunt us because we remember it. It haunts us because we don’t.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
