Pearl (2022)

X, though taking place in a rural area outside of Houston, Texas in 1979, was filmed in New Zealand.  Writer and director Ti West did a pretty good job of disguising this, although if one looks closely the moon is upside down.  It really did nothing to affect the story except give Ti West a bit of extra money from the New Zealand government to help make the movie.  However, at the time, COVID-19 was a bit of a concern and New Zealand had some of the strictest rules about entry.  That meant that he, and actress Mia Goth, were quarantined for two weeks.  During those two weeks they wrote a second script - a prequel - regarding the character of Pearl and set it during the time of another major pandemic. 

In 1918 Pearl (Goth) is living with her parents on the family farm in Texas.  Her mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) is a strict German immigrant who is trying to keep Pearl's attention focused and ambitions in check.  Pearl's father (Matthew Sunderland) is paralyzed and unable to speak or feed himself, while her husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) is away fighting in Europe as World War I begins to wind down.  

Pearl is anxious to leave the farm and the control of her mother and finds escape in movies.  She soon becomes enamored of a projectionist (David Corenswet) at the theater in town despite being married.  She also has some disturbing tendencies which her mother has noticed, including taking a bit too much pleasure in the slaughter of small animals on the farm.  When her sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) lets her know about a tryout for a touring dance company Pearl, despite her mother forbidding it, hangs all of her hopes and dreams on winning it. 

I wish Pearl had come out before X.  Because the first movie shows us what Pearl is capable of and how deranged she is events that happen don't come as big of a shock as they would if this was the first time meeting her.  It does humanize her a bit, but it also makes it clear that she managed to exist and keep doing what she was doing for the next 60 years.  There is a story in there somewhere for Howard and how he went from the shock when he returns from the war to eventually being her protector and enabler.  

Because we know how things are going to turn out for Pearl decades in the future the performance of Mia Goth is key.  She is able to bring the character to life better without all the old-age makeup that she had to wear in X, and I still believe it would have been better to have another older actress play her in that movie as it would not have resulted in any issue with Goth player her in this one.  I like understated villains.  There is room for over-the-top camp, but the scariest ones are always those that one could sit down and have a conversation with while all the time knowing at any point they could remove one's head and keep it as a trophy without the slightest change in emotion.  Most people can understand getting pushed to the point of violence, but for Pearl it is just one more aspect of her personality, and Mia Goth is the rare young actress who knows how to portray this.

This doesn't mean we should ignore Tandi Wright.  Ruth is a woman trying to hold on to what family she has left and to face a world with stoicism instead of anger.  While she seems a bit extreme, she is right.  She is a woman who has sacrificed everything for her husband and for Pearl and has received little to nothing in return for it.  Because of World War I even being German has isolated her from her neighbors.  Lesser actresses, and lesser directors, would have made her a villain rather than a woman of great emotion that has to keep it bottled up, particularly trying not to show the fear she has of her own daughter. 

Then, of course, there is Ti West.  He's an anomaly with horror directors.  There are many that use '60s and '70s aesthetics in their films, but they often use them to accentuate the grimy, exploitation feel of many of the low-budget horror films of the time.  West is interested in the way a story plays out, letting it take its time to build rather than desensitizing the viewer halfway through or being cleverly self-aware.  He is looking at movies from the past as inspiration for how to present his work to the audience, and the fact that he has a photographer's eye is his biggest asset.  There is a scene toward the end where, after coming clean to Mitsy, West uses the widescreen format in a way I haven't seen in years to both raise tension and give the audience the same feeling of dread that Mitsy has at that moment. 

I don't find Pearl to be a perfect movie.  I do feel that there is occasionally the tendency of West to try to be quirky just to be so, or because he feels like he's not being artsy enough.  That often pulls one out of the story and reminds the audience they are watching a movie, when we should be concentrated on the events that are happening rather than her imagination.  Those scenes are well done, but not as well done as everything else.  I do admire that West also decided to abandon the slasher formula of X for a period piece combined with psychological horror, as this works more toward his strengths, allowing him to give us something of his own rather than building on what others have done before. 

Pearl (2022)

Time: 103 minutes

Starring: Mia Goth, Tandi Wright, David Corenswet, Emma Jenkins-Purro

Director: Ti West