“Perpetrator,” Chicago-based filmmaker Jennifer Reeder’s fifth and most commanding and elegantly bloody feature to date, begins with both eyes on a cheap thrill that the movie very quickly turns inside out and sideways.

A girl in a red parka, a shade of red that spells trouble, walks down a residential street at night. She looks over her shoulder once, twice, three times. Heavy male breathing fills the soundtrack. Then a jump forward, to the killer’s lair. “Deep breaths now, Evelyn,” the hideously masked man says to his captive, adding: “Girls like you just don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s all gone.”

We’ve been down that street too often in our moviegoing lives. But Reeder has other ideas. This is a sly, poetically gory vision of predation, female rage, female survival and every kind of shape-shifting women learn, out of necessity, when they’re young.

Reeder’s protagonist is Jonny, short for Jonquil, played by the first-rate chameleon Kiah McKirnan (”The Adults,” “Mare of Easttown”). Turning 18, living with her crumbling, troubled father (Tim Hopper), she leaves town at his behest to live with her great aunt Hildie, portrayed with 19th century elocution and airs by Alicia Silverstone, down the block and across the street from Catherine Deneuve in “The Hunger.”

[ Talking to Chicago filmmaker Jennifer Reeder about women who make movies ]

“Perpetrator” isn’t a vampire movie, or any sort of conventional, predictable anything. It’s clear from her first scene that Hildie is either going to murder Jonny or save her. Hildie’s secret, as we learn fairly early in the blithely surreal narrative, involves an ancestral trait — curse? superpower? — that Jonny must confront, and develop. She and her new cohort of high school senior friends have had enough of their classmates disappearing, presumed dead at the hands of the killer.

“You have the eyes of someone much older,” says a school administrator, examining Jonny early on. Like many on screen, she’s a target for physical violence, in this case self-inflicted (a plastic surgery procedure is all the rage). The scene is soon interrupted by the school staffer’s nosebleed. Many noses bleed in the story. It’s the primary liquid on screen throughout, and the bloodletting in “Perpetrator” gushes in the copious spirit of many previous filmmakers, starting with Brian De Palma and especially Dario Argento.

Jonny, like it or not, has been charged with carrying on the family tradition of something called the “forevering” (also the title of an earlier Reeder short film). She can communicate, more or less telepathically, by placing a hand on someone, or simply through “profound spectral empathy,” as Hildie explains at one point. While that component of “Perpetrator” beams on and off in terms of dramatic effectiveness, the film works anyway thanks to Reeder’s wild change-ups and the film’s singular atmospheric texture.

Crucially, some key conversations among the teen characters, especially Jonny and her new friend, Elektra, played by Ireon Roach, are beautifully written and acted in a naturalistic vein. The film is also unexpectedly funny, and the best bits (such as the reprehensible principal’s school shooting drills, the one we see in action carrying the label of “Code: Massacre” and “Level: Bloodbath”) have a way of coming back around for more.

In a larger sense, much of Reeder’s work comes back around to her persistent, painfully fruitful themes of victimization, a toxic patriarchy and a way forward — no retreat, no surrender. The film’s images and soundscapes are often stunning, thanks to Reeder, cinematographer Sevdije Kastrati and composer Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The precise context of the movie’s release, prior to its Sept. 1 streaming debut on Shudder, is a week wherein “Bottoms” (utterly different vibe and energy, also worth seeing) takes on a lot of the same ideas. So does “Barbie,” about which you may have heard.

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.

“Perpetrator” — 3 stars (out of 4)

No MPA rating (violence, language, copious bodily fluids)

Running time: 1:40

How to watch: Premieres at Music Box Theatre Aug. 24. Premieres on Shudder via AMC+ Sept. 1.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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