Movie Review : Pearl (2022)
Origin stories are a bad idea. It's more fun in theory than it is in practice to understand where a character comes from, because knowing it robs us of our active role in the alchemy of creation. Different characters mean different things to different people until their creator or intellectual property owner overexplains them. It sucks the mystique out of any fiction, but it feels especially true for horror. A character is scary if he or she feeds on your own fear to fill the gaps between his or her actions.
Ti West’s Pearl is somewhat of an exception to this rule. The term ‘origin story' is applied quite liberally to this film.
Pearl is the origin story of the old, horny and homicidal old hag in X, who lusted after the film crew of a porn movie who was shooting in her guest house. It turns out that young Pearl (Mia Goth) has always lived on the same farm, but it never quite sat right with her. She wanted to be a dancer, like in the pictures. Get away from her austere German mom Ruth (Tandi Wright) and her handicapped, barely alive father (Matthew Sunderland), but world had other plans for an unstable little girl with darkness in her heart.
Inverted X
Pearl is very much an inversion of its predecessor X, but it works with the same underlying principle. The characters (in this case the lone important, titular character of the movie) isn't some kind of soulless killing machine, she is driven by something inside her and that something unlike for X isn’t death or the fear or death, but rather desire. Pearl is possessed by this unattainable image of herself and kills people who create that gap between her and her imaginary self. That sure is one way to achieve your dreams.
So Pearl is also an inverted slasher where the killer isn't an embodiment of a social fear, but rather someone who operates from a relatable place. There is a couple gut-wrenching (if a little grotesque) scene where Pearl auditions for a local dancing gig and gets turned down. Mia Goth starts sobbing and wailing that she's special and that she's a star on the tiny, pathetic wooden stage. The camera lingers for way too long on her wrecking chagrin and out of control tears. It is heartbreaking in the most abject way possible.
You're not suppose to empathize with a character who murders to solve her problems. Well, sometimes you do when the problem seems unfair or unsolvable, but Pearl's issues are fiercely anchored in a wrongful perception of herself that was enforced by brutal farm living, family tragedy and a needlessly austere upbringing. Pearl's estrangement from her own feelings echoes ours in a funhouse mirror kind of way. We don't want to be her, but it's hard not to feel a little compassion for a dreamer in a hopeless world.
We need to talk about Ti West
Listen. Ti West is really, really fucking good at this directing thing. To a point where I believe horror movies might end up restricting his creativity somewhere down the line? Pearl was shot in a vintage style like its predecessor X, but instead of the grindhouse aesthetic West chose to pay hommage mid-century classic RKO picture with the swelling orchestral music, funky transitions and over-the-top dialogue. But don’t get me wrong. Its not a genre pastiche and that's what makes it so damn unsettling.
The fact that Pearl is a modern movie shot with the best technology available (it's in colour, delivered in a modern way) with an aesthetic completely taken out of context makes it look like the feverish dream of a young woman who had trouble dissociating her desire from reality. Where it gets interesting is that we're not experiencing this problem from her point of view, but from an objective observer’s point of view. What you see is her world, but what every other character sees is her actions.
Pearl’s plight is symbolized with the pig head that is left rotting on the porch for half of the movie. Everything is bright and coloured, but there’s this Hitchcockian reminder on her family’s porch that he psyche is coming undone by failure, responsibility and hopelessness. There's plenty of physical violence in Pearl, but the worst violence is existential and psychological and you’re a hopeless witness to it. Pearl’s mental tailspin is perhaps the film’s ultimate violence and it is perpetrated on the audience.
*
Pearl was, in every respect, a cinematic equal to X. A sister piece if you will. It is aesthetically different, but espouses the same narrative philosophy and because of that is just as riveting as its older sibling. It's a smart, colourful and creative enough horror movie to stand tall above the great majority of its competitors and a calling card for a bold, young director. I’ve seen so much great, creative and surprising cinema this year, I’m almost tired. But Ti West is for real and Pearl is one of the best origins stories out there.
