So, what just happened in The Perfection?

Photo credit: Netflix
Photo credit: Netflix

From Digital Spy

Note: Contains spoilers for The Perfection, including its ending.

Netflix's latest horror offering The Perfection has landed in time to creep you out over the Bank Holiday weekend.

In a nutshell, it follows musical prodigy Charlotte (Allison Williams) as she heads to Shanghai to reconnect with her former mentors. There, she meets their latest prodigy Lizzie (Logan Browning), setting the two of them on a dark journey you won't see coming.

The Perfection has plenty of twists and perspective shifts up its twisted sleeve, so we thought we'd delve into how it all fits together come the outrageous climax. Massive spoilers await, so don't read past the photo if you haven't watched it.

Photo credit: Netflix
Photo credit: Netflix

The movie is split into four parts – Mission, Detour, Home, Duet – with the first part not quite setting you up for the madness to come.

Charlotte and Lizzie meet in Shanghai and strike up an instant connection, ending the night by sleeping together and deciding to go sight-seeing the next day. But as soon as Detour starts, things quickly go wrong.

Lizzie wakes up with a hangover, or so she thinks, because when she's on the bus, she throws up and her vomit appears to contain maggots. She starts to worry that she's contracted the "haemorrhagic fever" that's broken out in China, and the pair are thrown off the bus.

Photo credit: Netflix
Photo credit: Netflix

Worse is to come though as Lizzie sees bugs crawling under her skin and, handily, Charlotte has a cleaver ready, so Lizzie chops her hand off.

But wait. The movie then literally rewinds to their hotel room and we realise the whole thing has been Charlotte's devious plan. The ibuprofen she's been giving Elizabeth was actually her dead mother's pills that can cause "itching, nausea, hallucinations". There never were any bugs; it was all a figment of Lizzie's imagination that Charlotte helped to cultivate ("Are those f**king bugs?").

Three weeks later and 'Home' starts. Lizzie returns to the Bachoff Academy of Music, but finds her mentors Anton and Paloma have no use for a one-handed cellist and kick her out.

She heads to Minneapolis and breaks into Charlotte's home, attacks her and takes her back to the Academy. And it's here where we get the full context for Charlotte's trick on Lizzie as she was "trying to help her".

Photo credit: Netflix
Photo credit: Netflix

It turns out that the tattoo that Charlotte and Lizzie both have of a musical note is a sign that they've both suffered in The Chapel. In this room in the academy, Anton tests all of his prodigies to play 'The Perfection' and if they make a mistake, Anton and two other academy members, Geoffrey and Theis, rape them.

Anton then chains up Charlotte in The Chapel and threatens to rape his new prodigy, Zhang Li, if Charlotte fails. She does fail, but Anton tells her it was always going to be her that was punished: "She needs her tattoo. I'm not some random pervert."

He leaves Charlotte with Lizzie, Geoffrey and Theis but little does he know that Charlotte and Lizzie have been conspiring all this time. Geoffrey and Theis collapse as Lizzie had poisoned their drinks. Cue another rewind to the night that Lizzie attacked Charlotte and after the attack, we see Lizzie tell her: "I should f**king kill you, but you were right."

Photo credit: Netflix
Photo credit: Netflix

The final section of the movie, 'Duet', sees Lizzie and Charlotte kill Paloma, before turning their attention to Anton. Following a bloody battle that sees Anton mutilate Charlotte's arm, Lizzie beats up Anton and knocks him out.

He wakes up in The Chapel with all of his limbs amputated, watching on as Charlotte and Lizzie perform 'The Perfection' as a duet, each filling in for the other's missing hand.

Whether there was a motive for Anton raping his students that was linked to 'The Perfection' remains unclear. He talks about the performers being "a vessel of God" by playing that particular music in the acoustically-perfect Chapel, so could it be that he believed that the music would unlock something?

No, probably not. We believe that Charlotte is spot on when she persuades Lizzie to join her cause and bring down the academy: "It was just rape."

The Perfection is available to watch now on Netflix.


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