Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Ti West
Starring: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma
Jenkins-Purro
Ti West's recent 1979-set thriller
X
saw Mia Goth take on the dual roles of Maxine, a young pornstar,
and caked in heavy makeup, Pearl, a senile and murderous octogenarian.
Horror fans were surprised to learn that West had subsequently filmed
Pearl, a prequel to X, which sees Goth play a young version of the title character (a third
movie, focussed on Maxine and titled
Maxxxine, is set to arrive this year).
Where X drew heavily on Tobe Hooper's
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Pearl looks further back to another movie inspired by
the exploits of notorious serial killer Ed Gein – Alfred Hitchcock's
Psycho, with the young Pearl pitched as a cross between Anthony Perkins'
Norman Bates and Sissy Spacek's Carrie White.
It's 1918 and the world is ravaged by the Spanish flu, echoing the
pandemic conditions West and his crew shot their movie under, while the
Great War draws to a close in Europe. Roughly in her early twenties,
Pearl is stuck on the family farm while husband Howard is off fighting
on the other side of the pond. Her father (Matthew Sunderland) is
paralysed, confined to a wheelchair and unable to verbally communicate.
Her stern, religious German mother (Tandi Wright) has grown
embittered by the cards life has cruelly dealt her, and takes this out
on her daughter.
The one thing keeping Pearl sane is her love of the movies, which she
sneaks off to whenever she's sent to town on an errand. She harbours
dreams of becoming a chorus girl and enters a local competition seeking
girls to embark on a roadshow. But Pearl's love of movies is corrupted
when she is seduced by her local cinema's projectionist (David Corenswet), whose seduction technique involves presenting Pearl with a frame
clipped from a reel of her favourite movie (hey, it'd work on me!).
Growing paranoid that even he sees her as an oddball, Pearl's behaviour
takes a violent turn.
West shot Pearl on the same sets as X but
the movie has a very different aesthetic. Gone is the gritty '70s
grindhouse look of X, replaced here by a faux-technicolor presentation of rural America not
unlike Richard Donner's Norman Rockwell-inspired vision of Smallville in
his Superman movies. This sunny presentation casts the mentally unwell
Pearl as even more of an outsider. Backed by a peppy score by
Tyler Bates and Tim Williams that heavily evokes
Mary Poppins, Pearl is initially seen prancing around the farm and talking to the
animals (including the alligator from X) like the protagonist of some classic musical. We almost expect her to
lean over a fence and start singing 'Over the Rainbow'.
Despite the parodic pitch of much of the drama, West and Goth (who
co-wrote the script with the director) manage to suffuse the comedy with
genuine tension and suspense. If you've ever seen 1974's
Deranged, in which Roberts Blossoms plays a character based on…you guessed it,
Ed Gein, you know what to expect from the tone here. Like that movie,
Pearl gives us a…well, deranged protagonist that we
simultaneously laugh at, laugh with, feel sorry for, and ultimately
recoil in terror from. The movie is a hell of a showcase for Goth's
talents, and she really does some wonderful work here. Her journey from
put upon farm girl to a Lizzie Borden-esque axe-wielding killer is never
not convincing, and a late extended monologue sees the British actress
gifted the sort of scene that might garner awards talk if awards bodies
weren't so snooty about genre pictures.
Pearl owes a debt to a lot of previous movies, and to
America's real life history of colourful homicidal maniacs, but its
primary coloured presentation and heavy reliance on the offbeat charisma
of its young leading lady make it something of a unique experience in
the current monotonous landscape of the mainstream American horror
movie.
