Jennifer Reeder Selects
Jennifer Reeder - director of Perpetrator, Knives and Skin and Night's End.
"Campy Culty Chaos. Feral Femme Fetish. Glorious Goopy Gore. Nasty Neo Noir.
My list of Arrow Selects range from some undeniable classics by genre auteurs to more recent films from stylish storytellers who are just getting started. Generally, I am drawn to films that are peripherally or directly related to the films I make both in terms of form and content. I am a visual storyteller and I prioritize allegory over reality which is also what I appreciate about the films on this list. Each of these films, for me, is an unrelenting celebration of cinema as a profound form of fine art."
Bio:
Jennifer Reeder was recently named by Bong Joon Ho as a filmmaker to watch in the 2020s. She constructs nuanced genre films about relationships, trauma, and coping that borrow from a range of forms including after-school specials and amateur music videos and could be classified as NOIR CAMP. These films have shown at festivals and museums around the world, including Sundance, Berlin, Rotterdam, SXSW, Tribeca, BFI-LFF, and The Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale.
PERPETRATOR premiered at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival. The Playlist claims that “Jennifer Reeder has cemented her status as a horror doyenne with her fourth feature film.”
KNIVES AND SKIN, premiered at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival and was released theatrically by IFC Films. The Hollywood Reporter praised the film as the arrival of a “boldly original voice”.
Reeder's NIGHT'S END, with Michael Shannon, is a Shudder Original and premiered on the platform in March 2022. She directed a segment for horror anthology V/H/S '94, which she co-wrote with David Bruckner (THE NIGHT HOUSE and HELLRAISER), and premiered at Fantastic Fest. Reeder’s first feature, SIGNATURE MOVE (2017), premiered at SXSW and won the Grand Prize at the 2017 Outfest in LA. Her shorts can be seen on The Criterion Channel.
She has been an advisor at the Sundance Indigenous Program and is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the USA Fellowship, the Alpert Film Award residency at MacDowell Colony, a Creative Capital Grant and the SFFIM/Rainin Foundation award.
Additional Quotes about PERPETRATOR:
LA TIMES: You know that old saying about how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? The same could be said about the hazy line between gonzo art films and nerve-jangling horror. When movies get weird enough, they alter our sense of reality, becoming upsetting in ways that go beyond gore scenes and jump scares. David Lynch understands this. David Cronenberg knows it too. And so does Jennifer Reeder.
NYT: Screwy and strange, “Perpetrator” is gleefully unsubtle, but its ensanguinated excess is part of the fun.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: In the best possible way, Reeder has returned throughout her career to stories and characters rooted in trauma, while expanding the fantasy/reality boundaries of her narratives. This is her best realized work so far.
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Audition
2001 · Japan · Directed by Takashi Miike
One of the most notorious J-horror films ever made, Takashi Miike’s Audition exploded onto the festival circuit at the turn of the century to a chorus of awards and praise. The film would catapult Miike to the international scene and pave the way for such...
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Deep Red
From Dario Argento, maestro of the macabre and the man behind some the greatest excursions in Italian horror (Suspiria, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), comes Deep Red - arguably the ultimate giallo movie. One night, musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings, Blow Up), looking up from the street be...
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Torso
A sex maniac is prowling the streets of Perugia, targeting the picturesque university town's female students. Alarmed at the plummeting life expectancy of the student body, Jane (Suzy Kendall, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and her three friends elope to a secluded country villa - only to dis...
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The Initiation
1984 • United States • Directed by Larry Stewart
Kelly is looking forward to her sorority initiation with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. She's got every reason to be anxious considering the prank her sorority sisters have tasked her with: a late-night break-in at her father's departme...
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Dark Water
After terrifying audiences worldwide with the blockbuster J-horror classic Ring and its sequel, director Hideo Nakata returned to the genre for Dark Water, another highly atmospheric, and critically acclaimed, tale of the supernatural which took the common theme of the “dead wet girl” to new heig...
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The Crazies
1973 • United States • Directed by George A. Romero
After the experimental outings of There’s Always Vanilla and Season of the Witch, Night of the Living Dead director George A. Romero returned to rather more distinct horror territory with his 1973 infection opus The Crazies.
When a plane carry...
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Red Sun
1970 • Germany • Directed by Rudolf Thome
Thomas (Marquard Bohm, Kings of the Road) gets a ride to Munich where he finds his ex-girlfriend Peggy (counter culture activist and model Uschi Obermaier) who takes him in. In her flat he finds Peggy and her roommates have a commune-like lifestyle where...
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Switchblade Sisters
1977 · United States · Directed by Jack Hill
THE WILDEST GIRL GANG THAT EVER BLASTED THE STREETS!
From Jack Hill, legendary director of Spider Baby, Coffy, Foxy Brown, and The Swinging Cheerleaders comes another iconic cult classic, Switchblade Sisters!
Lace (Robbie Lee), the leader of inner c...
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Beyond the Door
Legendary filmmaker Ovidio G. Assonitis, whose 'Tentacles and Piranha II' sought to cash in on the killer fish craze spawned by 'Jaws', first hit pay dirt in 1974 with 'Beyond the Door' - a gloriously bonkers riff on 'The Exorcist' featuring Emmy Award-winning actress Juliet Mills and distinguish...
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The Vampire Doll
A young man goes missing after visiting his girlfriend's isolated country home. His sister and her boyfriend trace him to the creepy mansion, but their search becomes perilous when they uncover a gruesome family history.
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A Hole in My Heart
2005 • Sweden • Directed by Lukas Moodysson
Eric is a teenager who lives in a shabby flat with his father, Rickard. Eric spends most of his time holed up in his room, blaring industrial music in order to drown out what's going on around him. This is due to Rickard being an amateur filmmaker spec...
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The Most Dangerous Game
1978 • Japan • Directed by Tôru Murakawa
In this career-defining triptych, Matsuda is Shohei Narumi, an ice cool hitman of few words, a steely trigger finger, and a heart of stone, hired in The Most Dangerous Game by a company bidding for a lucrative government air defence contract to take out t...
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Horrors of Malformed Men
Medical student Hirosuke Hitomi slips out of the asylum in which he has been wrongfully confined and stealthily assumes the identity of a recently deceased nobleman with whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. Hirosuke eases his way into the nobleman's household and his dead double's marital bed. B...
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Lady Morgan's Vengeance
1965 • Italy • Directed by Massimo Pupillo
Gaslighting abounds in Massimo Pupillo’s Lady Morgan’s Vengeance – a delicate tale of romance and mystery, with a sprinkling of sadism and the supernatural – as newlywed Sir Harold Morgan (Paul Muller, Nightmare Castle) attempts to destroy his new bride...
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The Deeper You Dig
2019 • United States • Directed by John Adams and Toby Poser
Themes of family, loss and survival intersect on the thin line that separates the living from the dead in 'The Deeper You Dig', the latest feature written, directed by and starring filmmaking family the Adams Family ('Knuckle Jack', 'R...
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The Sacred Spirit
2021 • Spain • Directed by Chema García Ibarra
Julio is dead. It's terrible news for OVNI Levante, the association of ufology aficionados that he ran. The death hits one its members, José Manuel, particularly hard. Julio and he had a secret project to change human destiny. Now he must carry on a...
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Crumbs
The first feature film by director Miguel Llansó (Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway), Crumbs is a surreal, romantic, post-apocalyptic adventure set against a backdrop of Afrofuturism - a recurrent theme in Llansó's work. In a dystopian post-apocalyptic world, the various wars that tear our c...
