Review: Pearl (2022)

Pearl (2022)

Rated R for some strong violence, gore, strong sexual content and graphic nudity

Score: 5 out of 5

Earlier this year, Ti West, a filmmaker who I've long been a fan of, served up a very welcome surprise with X, a throwback slasher with a lot on its mind that was elevated by a great cast and very solid craftsmanship. And at the end of the film, after the credits rolled, came the biggest surprise of all: a teaser for a prequel called Pearl, set in 1918 and showing us the backstory of the evil old lady who terrorized the protagonists of X alongside her husband. Filmed back-to-back with X and released just six months later, it felt like West making up for lost time after spending six years largely directing TV episodes, his creative energies rejuvenated by his collaboration with Mia Goth (who co-wrote this film with West in addition to playing Pearl). And while it may lack the immediate impact of its predecessor, opting for a more low-key, psychological kind of horror while heavily toning down the sex and brutality, it still packs a punch, much of it courtesy of Goth once more stepping into the kind of role that can make a career. It not only stands tall on its own two feet, it makes X an even better film when placed next to it, avoiding many of the pitfalls of slasher sequels that explain too much about their enigmatic killers by endeavoring to make that explanation itself quite terrifying. If it maintains this standard of quality, I can't wait to see where this unlikely horror franchise ends up (and you better believe West is already working on the sequel).

Returning to the Texas farm where Pearl and her husband Howard killed a porn crew in 1979, this film flashes back sixty-one years to when Pearl was a fresh-faced young farm girl with big dreams. Unfortunately, she lives under the thumb of an oppressive mother Ruth, a German immigrant who's struggling to take care of both the farm and her paralyzed husband while also contending with anti-German prejudice during World War I and the onset of the Spanish Flu pandemic (hey, a handy excuse for everyone in this film, shot as it was during COVID, to have old-timey cloth face masks when they go into town!), and often taking all of her frustrations out on her daughter. Whenever Ruth sends Pearl into town to go shopping, she regularly sneaks off into the local movie theater, where she carries on an affair with the projectionist while her husband Howard is away on the green fields of France serving his country. When Pearl's sister-in-law Mitsy tells her about a traveling troupe holding auditions in the town, her Hollywood dreams are reignited, but as anybody who's seen where she is in X knows, none of this is going to end well.

Mia Goth only has one character to play here as opposed to the two, Pearl and Maxine, she did in the last film, but she makes up for it by diving deep into Pearl's fractured mental state. When we're introduced to her, she is already a sociopath who kills animals for fun, and while it's never outright stated, it's heavily implied that she has some kind of untreated mental disorder, one that has already led Ruth to fear and hate her by the start of the film. As the film goes on, Pearl slowly but surely descends into insanity, culminating in a gut-wrenching monologue after she's killed multiple people in which she lays everything bare. She's somebody whose ego and obsession with her dreams of fame lead her to commit unspeakable acts against everybody who gets in her way, and whose inability to interact with others like a normal human being is both a product of those dreams and, ironically, the reason why she'd likely never be able to achieve them even if things didn't go so horribly wrong for her. She's a corrupted version of Maxine from X, and in her relationship with her mother Ruth one can also see a warped version of Carrie on display. Both Ruth and Margaret White may be assholes, but whereas Margaret had no excuse for destroying Carrie's life with her religious insanity and played a large role in pushing her over the edge in the first place, Ruth is presented as somebody who seems to understand that her daughter is a budding monster and reacts accordingly. The longer the film went on, the more terrified I grew of Pearl, the presence who, by a certain point, made every encounter with another human character feel like it would end in bloodshed designed to serve her mad fantasies of becoming a star.

The rest of the film is no less effective, serving as an excellent stage for Goth to showcase her talents. West layers the film in a brightly-lit aesthetic that calls to mind old movies shot in Technicolor (to say nothing of the font used for the opening credits), used here to lend an ominous feel to the bucolic period Texas setting that's worlds away from the grindhouse grit and oppressive heat of X but no less effective at building its own atmosphere. It makes the film feel like a really twisted version of The Wizard of Oz, with Pearl as its evil Dorothy, a wholesome-looking farm girl with a heart of darkness. The supporting cast avoid falling into stereotypes, be they the mother Ruth whose hatred of her daughter turns out to be damn well justified, the unnamed and seemingly sleazy projectionist who we think will take advantage of Pearl but is instead terrified by her instability, or the airheaded blonde Mitsy who's set up to be an asshole but who turns out to be genuinely well-meaning. Having seen X and the state that Pearl is in by that point, this film makes no pretensions about the fact that it ends in tragedy, which means that, while it offers few surprises, it does carry a feeling of doom as we all know that something bad is coming, the only question being how many people are going to die along the way. It is a grim movie that hides just how nasty it really is behind a lush, made-up face -- a rather appropriate metaphor here, given what a piece of work its main character is.

Oh, and stay through the end credits. Just as X ended on a teaser for this film, so does this one end on a teaser for what's probably gonna be a hell of a finale for West and Goth's new trilogy.

The Bottom Line

It's a great and chilling movie on its own that makes another great movie even better. I can see them making for one hell of a double feature (and hopefully a triple feature before long), and either way, it's near the top of its class when it comes to modern horror.