Certificate: 15 (strong violence, gore, threat, sex, domestic abuse). Running Time: 102 mins. UK Distributor: Universal Pictures
WHO’S IN IT?
Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro, Alistair Sewell
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Ti West (director, writer, producer, editor), Mia Goth (writer), Jacob Jaffke, Harrison Kreiss and Kevin Turen (producers), Tyler Bates and Tim Williams (composers), Eliot Rockett (cinematographer)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
In 1918, an oppressed young woman (Goth) slowly heads down a deadly path…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON PEARL?
One of the most surprising things about last year’s horror standout X, from writer-director Ti West, was the unexpected dual role for lead actor Mia Goth: in addition to playing the protagonist, aspiring porn starlet Maxine, she also donned heavy old-age make-up to portray the film’s instantly memorable antagonist Pearl, who is perhaps the only slasher villain with a libido that’s just as high as their body count. More surprising, however, is that West and Goth came up with an entire backstory for Pearl that ended up becoming its own separate movie, filmed in secret at the same time as X and using many of the same sets and crew members, launching a whole new horror franchise in the process (the series is set to continue with the forthcoming MaXXXine, set after X and following Goth’s other character in the 1980s).
But perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that Pearl ended up being something that not only stands incredibly well on its own – you don’t need to have seen X before watching this – but, quite crucially, is also one of the creepiest and most effective psychological horrors to come along for a good long while.
Set in 1918, predominantly on the same Texas farm as previously seen in X, we follow Goth’s Pearl as a young woman trapped by circumstance: her husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) is off fighting in the Great War, leaving her behind on her German immigrant family’s farm, under the close and constricting watch of her monstrously strict mother Ruth (Tandi Wright), where she feeds the animals and looks after her paralyzed father (Matthew Sunderland). Pearl dreams of escaping her farm life and becoming a star, like the ones she sees at the local pictures, but her mother’s deeply oppressive control over her starts to bring about a more murderous side, which begins to clash with her wide-eyed look at the world.
Just as he styled X after the grimy grindhouse look of 70s exploitation movies, West brings a whole different look and tone to Pearl that also pays loving homage to an old-fashioned style of filmmaking. Here, though, West incorporates a much more classical Hollywood style, with the aesthetics like the cinematography, editing, performances and musical score adding to an atmosphere not unlike the kind you’d find in a Golden Age movie like The Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind. It even opens like a 50s-era Disney musical, with the brightly lit colours and overly cheery dialogue and acting styles adding a greater layer of detail to West’s intended tribute to this bygone era of filmmaking. Of course, though, it’s not long before both the movie and its title character show their more sinister side, but even then, West persists with the homage, gradually peeling it back without completely abandoning it, nor does he ever allow it to slip into full-on parody. You can tell that this filmmaker has a true adoration for this kind of filmic storytelling, and as with X he utilises it to its fullest potential, creating an atmosphere that makes the stuff which unfolds in the actual story much more chilling.
Pearl is radically different from X in terms of both its style and its substance, for while the latter was much more of a slasher movie in the vein of something like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, this is a much more intimate psychological character study of a young woman growing more and more unhinged due to the love-free environment she finds herself trapped in. West paces his film well, as he slowly shows the natural progression of this initially well-meaning but mentally disturbed character into the villain that she later becomes in X, but with a deeply sympathetic filter that allows the audience to understand the inner tragedy and torment of this person. As sinister and deeply psychotic as she soon proves herself to be, Pearl is a character that you do end up getting to know quite a bit, and you can see the enormous depths of her fragile psyche in her highly expressional face that always add a level of mystery as to her personal desires, moments such as a rather sexual encounter with a scarecrow notwithstanding.
So much of that comes from the amazing lead performance that Mia Goth gives here, perfectly embodying the old-school Hollywood acting style of Judy Garland and Vivian Leigh in those earlier scenes, but later delivering powerful and utterly unnerving monologues – shown mostly in one unbroken shot, no less – that few actors both then and now could pull off as well as she does here. You’re both empathetic towards her as well as terrified, especially as Goth – who is also credited as a co-writer with West – allows herself to give in to her character’s madness and enact some gruesome kills for some of the unfortunate supporting players, sometimes under some extremely upsetting circumstances where, in a twisted sense, you do still feel for this person. Goth’s performance is quite brilliant in the sense that it works as both a hero and villain origin story at the same time, but while it’s definitely leaning towards the latter you can still see how her arc does fit into the traditional “hero’s journey” narrative, albeit a significantly warped one in this instance.
Further proof of how much Goth’s performance really stays with you long after the credits roll can be found in the very last thing you see before said credits, which is by far and away the creepiest final shot of a film that I have seen in years. In addition to the context being deeply uncomfortable, what is shown features performance-based imagery that is extremely haunting, to where I – and even quite a few members of the audience I saw it with – was even scared to leave my seat while the end credits played over it. Seriously, I’ve seen full-on horror movies over the years that don’t end on such a scary note, or at least with visuals that won’t haunt my nightmares going forward. The moment is effectively executed by West’s deeply cinematic filmmaking style, and of course a mesmerising and piercing performance by Goth, both of which combine to end things on the most outstanding note of any movie, regardless of genre, I’ve seen in quite a while.
The occasional misstep aside – some of the parallels that the film draws between the Spanish influenza pandemic of the early twentieth century and the COVID-19 one in which both this and X were shot in are a bit too on-the-nose – Pearl is a rather great combination of a deeply character-centric psychological horror and a beautifully replicated classical filmmaking style, one that’s incredibly effective and creepy as all hell. I can honestly say that I liked this more than I did X, and find myself now looking forward even more to MaXXXine, which if Pearl is any indication could well take things to even greater heights for this series.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Pearl is an outstanding slasher prequel to Ti West’s X which tells the deeply disturbing story of that film’s villain with a loving recreation of classical filmmaking, but with a creepier edge thanks to West’s stylish and character-centric angle, and a truly unforgettable lead performance by Mia Goth.
