Pearl (2022) A24/Horror RT: 102 minutes Rated R (some strong violence, gore, strong sexual content, graphic nudity) Director: Ti West Screenplay: Ti West and Mia Goth Music: Tyler Bates and Tim Williams Cinematography: Eliot Rocket Release date: September 16, 2022 (US) Cast: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro, Alistair Sewell.
Rating: *** ½
It’s been a long time since a really good horror franchise came down the pipeline. We are a long way from the days when the likes of Jason, Freddy, Leatherface and Chucky haunted cinemas. Michael Myers (an elderly version) is still around, but maybe not for much longer. The newer ones, like Resident Evil and Paranormal Activity, just don’t do it for me. When it comes to horror, I want something gory, nasty and truly twisted. This year, my wish was granted with X and now the prequel Pearl.
In preparation for Pearl, I rewatched X last weekend. I was astonished to discover I liked it even better the second time, so much that I’ll be going back to my original review and upping my rating to three-and-a-half stars. That’s something I almost never do. Revisiting it made me look forward to Pearl even more. I’d even go so far as to say I was psyched for it. That too is something because I rarely get excited for movies these days. That might be the one thing I miss about my teenage years.
Directed once again by Ti West (The House of the Devil), Pearl is an origin story that centers on Pearl (Goth, A Cure for Wellness), the crazy old lady that terrorized the group of young people filming a porno movie on her property circa 1979. Here, we see her as a young farm girl with big dreams of fame and stardom. The year is 1918 and life isn’t easy with WWI going on and the Spanish Flu going around. Pearl hates her life on the farm. Her husband Howard is overseas fighting in the war. Her father (Sunderland, Out of the Blue), sick, speechless and confined to a wheelchair, requires constant care. Her mother (Wright, Black Sheep) is a dour, domineering sort who never has a nice word to say to her daughter. Her only solace comes from her flights of fancy where she imagines herself a star that’s loved by everybody.
Pearl wants to be a dancer like the girls she sees on the screen at the movie house in town. She sneaks to a show one afternoon where she meets the projectionist (Corenswet, We Own This City), a charming and handsome lad who tells her she has star potential. This encounter awakens something carnal in her. It isn’t long before she comes back to satisfy her illicit desires.
It’s no secret that Pearl is one disturbed girl. We saw it in X when she fed one of her victims to her pet alligator. We see it again in Pearl when she impales a duck with a pitchfork and feeds it to the gator. I wondered if it was the same gator, but I’m going to go with no since they typically live 30-50 years (according to Siri) and the two films take place more than 60 years apart. ANYWAY, we already know that something terrible is eventually going to happen. What will be the thing that pushes Pearl over the edge? I won’t say what, but when it finally happens, the result is freaking brutal!
Unlike the character she plays here, Goth is headed for big things. Her performance in Pearl is, at once, heartbreaking and horrifying. Here’s a young girl who’s constantly chastised and criticized by her insufferable mother for daring to want a better life. Her only escape is her fantasy life, one that she hopes to make a reality someday soon. When that fantasy is threatened, she loses it. Goth, who co-wrote the screenplay with West, makes you feel sorry for this girl despite the awful things she will do in the future (and near future). One of the best scenes is this six-minute monologue in which Pearl opens up about how she feels inside and the terrible things she’s done. In that moment, Goth shows us the humanity that lies beneath the surface of an inhuman monster. Then there’s the terrifying final shot. WOW! The expression on Pearl’s face is freaky with that wide, forced smile and facial tics. The camera lingers on it as the end credits roll.
One of the things I love about this series is West’s attention to style and his willingness to change things up. X is very much a rural Texploitation horror movie in the same vein as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Eaten Alive (both directed by Tobe Hooper). He takes Pearl in a completely different direction. Are you ready for this? It’s a twisted take on The Wizard of Oz! There’s even a scene involving a scarecrow that definitely would have violated the Production Code. Filmed in Technicolor like the color films of old and featuring a deceivingly lush score by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams, it also owes a lot to the melodramas of Douglas Sirk. We also get a dance number the likes of which you’ve never seen in the big, splashy musicals made by old school Hollywood. Oh yeah, West once again pays tribute to Quentin Tarantino with a few shots of Goth’s bare feet.
I assume everybody knows that Pearl was shot (in secret) back-to-back with X. A teaser trailer for the prequel served as a post-credits scene in cinemas. Well, be sure to stick around until the very, very end again. A teaser for the third installment MaXXXine (set in 1985 L.A.) is shown. Don’t have a release date yet, but if A24 does what it did with X and Pearl, it should hit theaters in about six months (i.e. March 2023).
I absolutely LOVE Pearl. It’s one more to add to the list of great ones (The Black Phone, Barbarian) in an unusually strong year for horror. It has some cool kill scenes. In one particularly gruesome bit, Pearl chops somebody up with an axe. Also, there’s an image at the end that gives new, nightmarish meaning to family dinner.
Surprisingly, Pearl is also a timely film with its many references to the pandemic, face coverings and sheltering at home. I didn’t expect that. I also didn’t expect that it would have something to say about celebrityism and the desire to be famous at any cost and how insidious it becomes when it doesn’t happen fast enough (if at all). I don’t know if this makes Pearl an elevated horror movie, but it doesn’t really matter. This is one totally f***ed up movie and I love it for that.
