Pearl is the proof that A24 believes it has found its’ first proper film franchise. And as with everything A24, it’s a bit of a gutsy move. Director Ti West pitched the idea of expanding on his movie X and they greenlit it before that film was even finished production. X and Pearl wound up being shot back-to-back with the latter not even being revealed publicly until X came out this past spring. And now it’s the fall, and we’ve got Pearl -a prequel origin story about the antagonist of X. Mia Goth, who played the dual role of heroine and villain in X, reprises her role of the latter here, in addition to receiving a co-writer credit (she’s also due to reprise her other role from X in a sequel probably due out next year). And while this process may seem very slap-dash and ostentatious, I have to say that Ti West’s little cinematic universe here is so far two for two -Pearl being its’ own interesting beast while tying into the movie that preceded it.
It’s a fairly different approach to the horror for one thing, which is certainly useful. Where X played a lot in the aesthetics and tone of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and underground horror of the 1970s, Pearl, which is set in 1918, looks more towards the early cinematic romance of Hollywood, albeit with some perverse dimensions out of something like Psycho. It opens on a farmhouse with swelling music and credits evocative of The Wizard of Oz, and maintains a touch of that escapism, as deranged as it may turn, all throughout.
If you saw X one of the first things you note here is that it appears to be the same farmhouse she would occupy as an old woman six decades later. She has grown up on it with her German immigrant mother (Tandi Wright), who instills very harsh values in her about personal responsibility over ambitions, and the hardships of the world. Still, Pearl is a desperate optimist, hoping to one day be a chorus girl like the ones she sees in the movies that play in the nearby town, where she must go routinely to pick up medicine for her infirm father (Matthew Sunderland). This has been the status quo for Pearl for some time when the story starts, and in tandem with her husband Howard off serving in the war, it becomes a lifestyle increasingly difficult to cope with -especially when one is already prone to extreme emotional states, or just disturbing habits like killing farm animals.
The sudden extremes in Pearl’s personality are played very well by the script, and even better by Mia Goth, who has given herself a gargantuan opportunity to show off her acting chops. In X, Pearl exhibited hints of a fascinating character, her sexual repression and envy of youth gave her a pathos not common of the slasher movie archetype she represented. But she was still fairly alien, especially with Goth caked in all that old age makeup. Here she is freer of what constraints that may place, and the intricacies of her character are more available to be explored. And in pluming the disturbed and pitiable nuances of this depressed southern farm girl, Goth creates a staggering image of someone reeling through a mess of complexes: self-loathing, entitlement, sexual frustration, narcissism, rage, and a primal yearning for power in a space of powerlessness.
Goth plays every scene as though Pearl is ready to burst from the pressure tapping into any one of these aspects and it makes for a tense watch, even in the most harmless of scenes. At the same time it’s not hard to relate to several of her feelings even if it’s understandable why they can’t be satiated. In responding to the devastating misfortunes Pearl suffers through, Goth can be incredibly scary in committed entrancing ways. A nine-minute monologue delivered in the last act, as disturbing as it is enrapturing, is likely to put Goth on the great Oscar snubs radar this year. As is an end credits scene (by which I mean a scene that plays through the end credits) in which she strains a deranged expression for just about the duration. Pearl would not work if its’ title character wasn’t so engaging, and in Goth’s hands she is profoundly so.
West though should not be discounted, very much using Goth’s performance as a bedrock to create an unsettling atmosphere of contrasts. We first see this in her innocent farm girl introduction being interrupted by chicken murder. Later in one of her fantasy reveries she dances chastely with a scarecrow (again evoking allusions to The Wizard of Oz) before using it as an explicitly sexual object. That theme of repressed sexuality is carried over from X, and so too is the pornographic aspect -a local projectionist (David Corenswet), with whom she is enamoured, showing her an early porn movie and speculating on her being a star of such films. It draws a conscious connection to Maxine, Goth’s character from X, while illustrating the sex industry as a lightning rod for Pearl’s subsequent breakdown -once she gets an idea of the world beyond, she’s all the more violently desperate to escape what she knows.
The culmination of this is an audition for a singing troupe that Pearl is intent on winning against the disapproval and bitter prediction of rejection by her mother -who hammers into her quite viscerally the cruelties and disappointments that will come crashing down (it hearkens back to the dynamic between Carrie and her mother). The audition is a spectacular sequence, seen in her minds’ eye as a fantastical elaborately choreographed routine backed by ironically composed World War I imagery (and a further hint of her psychological feelings towards her husband) that is sharp and truly spellbinding -as in I could see it appearing in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. The subtle horror with which its’ played is of course followed by brutal reality that Goth ensures is as crushingly heavy as it is predictable.
The movie’s sense of time and place has no adverse effect on its’ resonance. In fact, in spite of the occasional extremities to its’ horror, it comes off in an incredibly honest way, especially in how it relates Pearls’ psyche. West lets us see how it is more than just a Norma Bates-style upbringing that has raised her this way -indeed her mother is often sensible and sympathetic in her own right. Pearls’ environment has effected her as well, and one of its’ most immediately recognizable aspects is the frequent presence and reference to the pandemic -the 1918 Influenza pandemic of course, that was not-so-shockingly similar in appearance and public reaction to COVID-19. In town, everyone wears masks, people are worried about passing along the virus to friends and family -it starkly connects Pearls’ world to ours a century later, with all the same anxieties, all the same limitations. One more thing to make her feel alienated and trapped -and in a way that we deeply understand.
By releasing Pearl so soon after X, hell by filming it so soon, it not only shows confidence in a series but a craft. West certainly demonstrates a versatility of aesthetic. Pearl is clearly linked to X, they share a common grisliness when it gets right down to the terror, but they are so separate in style. Even if West is mostly adept as an imitator, there is a character to his homages that makes them fun. But of course Pearl really belongs to Mia Goth, whose turn here makes for the rare worthwhile origin story in the slasher genre. More than X this film surprised me, and I actually find myself looking forward to where else West and Goth build out this weird little universe of theirs.
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