Helloooo.
So, Netflix sucked me into watching yet-another-one of their original content plays this weekend, which I’m sure is not surprising at all based on the fact that I’ve been blogging about them constantly lately.
In the words of Diana Ross, “Netflix (no, this quote did not originally include the word Netflix), set me free, why don’t you, babe???”
This one was called The Perfection (not to be confused with the short story I wrote called Her Perfection, which you can read here, and, yes, this is a shameless plug). It’s classified as Thriller/Horror, which, no, I cannot handle, but did I decide to watch it, anyways?
Yes.
Because life is nonsense.
The Perfection stars Allison Williams (Girls, Get Out) and Logan Browning (Dear White People the movie) and gave me this Amanda Knox meets Black Swan vibe from the second it started.
Do I know Amanda Knox? No, but I watched a documentary. And have I seen Black Swan? No, but I’ve watched trailers.
Remember, this blog is called Things I’m Thinking, not Things I Know.
So, I think that The Perfection reminded me of Amanda Knox meets Black Swan, and I will say that I did not find it to be very horrific or thrilling. This is not to say that it’s bad, or that it won’t get you through a rainy 90 minutes one Saturday. I just wasn’t expecting to be able to roll over and sleep like a baby within 30 seconds of the final credits.
Alright, so a simple plot overview: Charlotte (Allison Williams) is an ex-cellist prodigy who had to leave this super renowned and exclusive school for other cellist prodigies when her mom got sick. Now, her mom has passed away, so she gets back in touch with her ex-teachers in the hopes of meeting up with them while they search China for the most promising new talent to bring into their cello program. (Can you tell how much of a classical musician I am??)
And this is how Charlotte meets Lizzie (Logan Browning), the cellist who pretty much took her place at this fancy school and is now this big time cello star with cello albums and fans and whatnot.
So they become “friends” in basically a night and then Lizzie gets really, really sick and there’s a lot of scenes to prove she’s really sick and that’s when it’s supposed to get all twisty and scary and whatnot. I think.
This is the first time I’ve seen Netflix do a psychological thriller and, while there were a couple things towards the end that I didn’t entirely see coming, I can’t really say anything was shocking. Pretty much within two minutes of meeting any of these characters, I could classify them as “Good,” “Bad,” and/or “Conspirator” and ended up being right about all of them. So even though I couldn’t always predict exactly what they were up to, it was pretty easy to figure out who was up to something.
I will say that the one thing I was expecting was for this to turn itself into a bigger social commentary, given both these actresses’ film credits, but – alas – it did not.
Otherwise, this unfolded generally how I would have expected it to, even though I did have some unanswered questions at the end. But I am at peace with that – like when you order a brownie sundae, and it’s not as great as you imagined it’d be.
But, still. Brownies.
Happy bingeing!
Xo Charlene
thingsimthinking.blog 