But, ultimately, Reeder’s work is entirely her own. She knows women, and she knows how to write them, with all their complications and idiosyncrasies. Her voice is singular in the field of American horror cinema, and it is crucial: with wry wit and depth, Reeder consistently centers the experiences of girls and women in a genre that has historically made them nothing more than victims.

This is evident in Reeder’s latest, the critically acclaimed Perpetrator, which was nominated to compete in the Berlin International Film Festival and for Best Feature Film in the international Teddy Awards. Released in 2023, it stars Alicia Silverstone alongside newcomer Kiah McKirnan. McKirnan plays Jonny, an impetuous teenage girl sent to live with her aunt (Silverstone) in a town notorious for young women who mysteriously disappear. The film twists and turns, building a disturbing story while incorporating Reeder’s signature camp aesthetic. Perpetrator takes on feminist issues, and in particular those around being an out-of-place teen girl, in fresh and empowering ways.

Reeder got the idea for Perpetrator while working on 2019’s brilliant Knives and Skin. While she was touring the film, she noticed how many reporters wanted to know about what it was like to work with teenage girls. Reeder loved working with them, but she saw how that answer tended to confuse or even shock her interviewers. 

“They were asking it from the perspective of feeling like working with teenage girls would be their absolute nightmare,” Reeder said. “I thought, wow. We are a culture totally obsessed with youth and beauty, especially among young women—and yet, we absolutely hate young women. We do everything that we can to disrupt their evolution.”

Reeder, who has three sons, drew upon her experiences talking with friends who raised girls and described them as being unmanageable as they got older. “I thought, what if I made a film where there was a girl, and she's kinda wild and out of control, according to her parents and the adults of her life—and then she really becomes wild and out of control,” Reeder said. 

In some ways, Perpetrator tells a story that is similar to the very first film Reeder ever made: White Trash Girl. “I often feel like I'm making the exact same film over and over again, which is about an unruly kind of woman,” said Reeder. 

White Trash Girl, a film short about a woman (played by Reeder) with a rough upbringing who becomes the leader of a group of misfits, was Reeder’s master of fine arts thesis when she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The film went on to be featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and it helped to launch Reeder’s now-storied career. 

Reeder was always interested in film. Her parents were amateur cinefiles, and they showed her Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, which she still considers deeply influential. Reeder chose SAIC because of its Video program—which, in the 1990s, had its own department. When she was an undergraduate at The Ohio State University, the film program (in which she’d been enrolled) folded, and Reeder was grandfathered into the art department. There, she discovered video installations, and realized that this kind of art-making was more up her alley anyway. In her free time, she rented films and noticed that all the works she was interested in checking out came from a place called the Video Data Bank at SAIC.

“I was like, ‘What is this nirvana?’ And I realized it was housed in the Art Institute of Chicago,” Reeder said.

The first thing Reeder did when she arrived at SAIC was go to the Video Data Bank, where she asked for, and subsequently received, a job.

But things didn’t go as smoothly once Reeder started her coursework. Although she loved many of her professors, critical film theory classes felt frustratingly out of her depth, and she floundered to find a place to fit in. 

“I was totally lost, and I didn't know who to turn to to say, ‘I have no idea what we're talking about right now,’ because so many other people in the class were into it—or even totally over it,” Reeder said. Her first critique panel went poorly, and she contemplated dropping out after her first semester. 

But instead, she decided to persist. Reeder made White Trash Girl in her second semester and presented it unapologetically, even though she felt it didn’t match the academic tone of her classes. 

“I had every intention of really irritating my grad advisors and the [critique] committee,” Reeder said. “I decided I was going to make this disgusting superhero. The thing that people think is her weakness— that she's just, like, dumb and disgusting—is gonna be her superpower.” 

But, to Reeder’s total surprise, her critique panel loved it.

“They were like, ‘This is really transgressive. This is so much about race and class and gender, and it's really fresh,’” Reeder said. Buoyed by the encouragement, she went on to make two more video performances in the same vein, and she ended up winning a thesis prize when she graduated. 

Since then, Reeder’s creative passion has pivoted to horror. She likes the genre because it allows her to lean into visual storytelling and her tendency toward the surreal, and she’s made more than a dozen films since graduating, continually stretching into more ambitious projects and becoming a godmother of the camp horror movie scene. Her film A Million Miles Away, which she made in 2014, was nominated for a Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and screened at the prestigious and competitive Sundance Film Festival. She’s won a handful of grants to make her work, and in 2021, she won a United States Artists Fellowship. 

“The first Jennifer Reeder film I saw was Blood Below the Skin, and it stopped me in my tracks, a film that so deftly captures the equally intoxicating and suffocating experience of being a teenage girl in America,” remembers Rebecca Fons, director of programming at SAIC’s Gene Siskel Film Center. “Her voice is crystal clear, and with every new project she invites audiences into her singular world, which is dark, distinct, and a whole lot of fun.”

Reeder knows her own path to filmmaking was unusual, but now that she’s at the top of her game, she feels a responsibility to invite young filmmakers with unique stories to the front. She has produced a handful of films, but she’s picky. “I want Indigenous filmmakers, trans filmmakers, queer filmmakers—people for whom the path looks like it doesn't exist or is at least overgrown,” she said. She’s produced over a dozen short films, including the forthcoming Desire Lines and Aces In The Wild. 

Reeder’s mind is always churning over what the next project will be. Right now, she is working on two: an adaptation of a short story by the novelist Julianna Baggott, and an original script that’s an action film about a killer in the later years of her life. 

Whatever comes next will complement an already amazing and multifaceted career. Reeder has accomplished enough for more than one human life—but she is eager to keep going. “I came to where I am in the house of filmmaking by kicking in the basement window,” she said. “We have to make our own path, which can be exhausting, but this work over many years has allowed me to find, foster, and maintain my own voice and vision.” ■