Film Review — Pearl
Ti West’s horror prequel features an astonishing central performance from Mia Goth that should have been Oscar-nominated.
For some reason, Ti West’s Pearl — a prequel to last year’s enjoyable 1970s slasher throwback X — took almost a year to reach the UK. I finally caught up with it at the cinema last night and have three immediate reactions: 1) The central performance by Mia Goth is outstanding, and ought to have been Oscar nominated, once again making me shake my head in dismay at the Academy’s refusal to acknowledge horror. 2) Pearl is significantly superior to its predecessor. 3) As both a horror connoisseur and cineaste, I loved it.
Of course, the word “horror” will immediately have turned off some audiences, and as usual, I always feel that’s a bit of a shame. Pearl is an exceptionally well-crafted piece of work, stunningly directed by West. It partly plays as a pastiche of classic Hollywood melodramas, whilst still being a strong, character-centred genre piece with all the vitality and relevancy required to raise this above mere self-indulgence.
The titular Pearl (Goth), who appeared as an old woman in X, is here a young married woman, awaiting the return of her husband (Alistair Sewell) from the frontlines of the First World War. She lives with her austere religious mother (Tandi Wright) and her invalid father (Matthew Sunderland) on a farm in Texas (the same farm seen decades later in X). Frustrated by her menial life and longing for escape, she dreams of becoming a movie star. A bohemian projectionist (David Corenswet) at the local cinema, who shows her silent porn films illicitly smuggled to the US from France, encourages Pearl to pursue her dreams, no matter who gets in her way. Unfortunately, Pearl winds up taking this rather more literally than he intended.
As is evident from early scenes of needless goose slaughter and simulating sex with scarecrows, Pearl is clearly a troubled character. Feeling increasingly trapped and oppressed, she’s a ticking timebomb. Her miserable relationship with her German immigrant mother echoes that of Carrie White in Carrie, but Pearl is more defiant, and her mother is a more rounded character too, with bitterness, regret, and pride bubbling beneath her sanctimonious demeanour.
What elevates this is telling parallels between 1918 and the present. For a start, the Spanish Flu is ravaging the world. People in masks, paranoid about germs and quarantine, are an all too relatable scenario given the events of recent years. This scenario adds to Pearl’s isolation, and her dreams of Hollywood mirror contemporary desires among the young to be influencers on social media. On top of this, universally relatable themes of ambition, broken dreams, sexual frustration, and feeling trapped feed into the narrative, making Pearl an even more compelling protagonist.
In addition to the obvious horror touchstones (Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Repulsion), West channels everything from The Wizard of Oz to All That Heaven Allows in homage to old Hollywood, with opulent, overripe visuals, wipe edits, deliberately dialled-up performances, and a lush, sweeping music score by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams that apes the golden era of Max Steiner and Bernard Herrmann. But it is Goth’s presence as writer, executive producer, and most emphatically her onscreen performance, that gives this labour of love real dramatic heft. One tour-de-force monologue near the end, held in extended close-up, is particularly riveting.
Although Pearl works as a standalone film, West drops clever reminders that it is the second instalment in what is now confirmed to be a trilogy. For instance, Pearl’s attraction to the projectionist and his stash of secret porn echoes and foreshadows X, in which the Deep Throat-era filmmakers covertly making a porn film awaken Pearl’s murderous impulses once more. I’m now immensely curious to see where West takes this in the upcoming MaXXXine. In the meantime, Pearl comes highly recommended to horror fans, with Mia Goth’s increasingly impressive talent a wonder to behold.
(Originally published at Simon Dillon Books.)
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