Pearl (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

Here it is, the unexpected (well, it was back in March) second installment in A24's surprise horror franchise from Ti West. The initial film, X, was a work of genius, though most audiences probably simply appreciated it as a gory '70s slasher homage; it deftly transgressed subgenre boundaries to make a work of consummate art firmly entrenched in the eccentricities of its thematic and generic roots. Its post-credits video proved to be a trailer for this film, centering on the murderous old woman Pearl and presumably performing as a sort of origin story for her. It was a weird trailer, and one that I was frankly not terribly excited to see. After all, the more we know about the villain or monster, the less scary it usually is, right?

Pearl takes place in 1918 Texas, on a small rural farm that looks a little too familiar. She's back on the farm with her German immigrant parents while her husband Howard is away at war. Her domineering mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright) runs a tight ship and demands a lot from her daughter, who is perhaps a little too young to be a new bride, but the film glances over that. Pearl has too many stars in her eyes and dreams in her head. She dances and sings too much, wishing to someday be a chorus girl or movie star. She runs through her routines, sometimes in her mother's clothes from which she has been repeatedly forbidden, sometimes retreating to the barn where the animals at least won't disapprove. She shows little care or concern about her absent husband, preferring to escape into the local cinema in secret. Her wide eyes absorb every frame on that screen, helping her push through the doldrums of farm life and caring for her invalid father.

But something is very wrong with Pearl. Is Ruth abusive to Pearl because the girl is flighty, or is that only Pearl's perception of her? Or, perhaps, is Ruth scared of her own progeny? Pearl's demeanor is not unlike a young Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, dreaming of heaven beyond the rainbow, but she barely bats an eye when, to take out her sporadic and unpredictable rage, she skewers a duck with a pitchfork and feeds it to her best friend, an enormous alligator in the nearby pond she has affectionately named after Theda Bara. It's nice that she bathes her father, but she always gets caught actually bathing herself while he sits a little too closely. Her constant quotes, "All I want is to be loved" and "the whole world is going to know my name," sound innocent enough, but we realize fairly quickly that she is deeply unhinged and that these desperate pronouncements are indicative of desperation at any cost. It's as though she's trying too hard to live up to her name, becoming a human gem, something calculatedly innocent and naive to endear the predatory Hollywood executives.

They don't bite, but the local cinema projectionist does. The handsome David Corenswet plays the nameless man, lusting after the wide-eyed Mia Goth with pitch-perfect chemistry. Every actor here is pretty great, to be fair, but the passion these two have is infectious. We're torn between wanting the best for her and stifling our shouts to him to run for his life. Goth is delirious in the role of a young performer's lifetime -- the third massive and award-worthy role she's played this year alone -- and the film primarily works as a result of her dedication to her own insanity. This movie makes you feel as icky as Joker did, where we're forced to sympathize with her even as we are not protected from the horrors she enacts.

There are fewer dead bodies this time around, though I'd argue each is more disturbing and impactful than the ones in X. West and his cinematographer and editor work seamlessly again to craft a waking nightmare with jolting scares and brutal violence, this time all in a color palette a little too rich in hue. Whereas the previous film took its visual inspiration from the independent horror exploitation films of the '70s, here we're treated to a vision meant to mimic the Technicolor vibrancy of the late '30s and '40s. Even the opening sequence feels like an evocation of The Wizard of Oz, and much of the story mirrors that staple film with impossibly dark twists, as when she meets a scarecrow and does unspeakable things to it. Thank goodness this one indeed doesn't have a brain. And then there's the film's constant references to pandemic, as the Spanish flu rages on and the family is meant to be isolating in their farmhouse; there are even visual gags with homemade face masks that feel intentionally funny and alarming at once. They hammer home the points that history repeats itself (a theme helped by Goth's casting, of course) and the needling sensation that the world has become an incurably sick place.