Pearl Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Ti West
Stars: Mia Goth, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, David Corenswet, Alistair Sewell, Emma Jenkins-Purro.
In 2022 director Ti West gave us X, one of the best horror films of the year, which subverted the usual expectations of the slasher genre. Set in the late 70s, X told the story of a group of young amateur filmmakers who journeyed to Texas to shoot a porn film but ended up being the unwitting stars of a real-life horror film as a creepy elderly couple took exception to the content of their film and dispatched them in gruesome fashion. Pearl serves as a prequel to that film and gives us the backstory detailing how Pearl (played by Mia Goth, who also cowrote the script with West), a rather naïve star struck young farm girl who dreamed of becoming a movie star changed into the embittered homicidal crone we encountered in X.
Pearl is set in 1918. The world is at war and also in the grip of a worldwide pandemic which has increased tensions. Pearl’s husband Howard (Alistair Sewell, from The Power Of The Dog, etc) is off fighting in the trenches in Europe and she is uncertain as to his fate. She lives on the Texas farm with her domineering religiously devout mother Ruth (Tandi Wright, who worked as intimacy co-ordinator on X) and her catatonic, wheelchair bound father (Matthew Sunderland). Pearl loves dressing up and often disappears into her own fantasy world where she is the star of a silent Hollywood movie, the biggest star the world has ever seen. The strict Ruth disapproves of such flights of fantasy, insisting that Pearl remain grounded and help out with chores around the farm. She feels trapped.
One day while in town to collect morphine for her ailing father she visits the local cinema and watches a lavish Hollywood musical on the screen. She also meets the handsome projectionist (David Corenswet, from Look Both Ways, etc), who encourages her dreams. He is also responsible for her sexual awakening after showing her an early stag film. Pearl also sets her sights on winning a local dance competition with her best friend and sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) in the hopes that this will be her ticket out of her boring small-town existence.
But Pearl also has an angry streak, and as her frustration builds she graduates from murdering small helpless farmyard animals to killing her parents. And one murder inevitably leads to others.
Pearl was shot simultaneously with X, which was set in 1979, and as with that film West slowly builds the tension and develops an atmosphere of growing uneasiness. There is plenty of bloodletting, although West’s handling of the material is more subtle and restrained, and the gore is leavened with touches of dark humour. West obviously knows the tropes of the genre, but he also loves the early Hollywood films, and there are some clear allusions to other classic films, including Psycho and The Wizard Of Oz.
Goth revels in the character and conveys her mood swings, from sweet and innocent to vicious and unhinged. And she commands the screen with her near eight-minute single take monologue in which she reveals her innermost thoughts, regrets and fears to an increasingly apprehensive Mitsy. Wright brings a cold and cruel streak to her role as the tyrannical mother.
The production design from Tom Hammock is nicely done and adds to the period detail. Regular cinematographer Eliot Rockett has shot the film in bright and vivid colours, which mirror the glorious and lush 50s-style melodramas of Douglas Sirk and his ilk, and which is a marked contrast to the gloomy and gritty visual style of X. The stirring orchestral score from Tyler Bates and Tim Williams reinforces the tone of the piece and heightens the tension superbly.
Pearl is a very different film to X, but it is a strong sequel that does work as a stand-alone horror movie, and it sets up expectations for MaXXXine, the third film in West’s proposed trilogy.
★★★☆
