One of the most unique horror flicks I’ve reviewed, with one of the most unique performances to match. The question is, uniquely good or uniquely bad?
Pearl ends with one of the most uncanny and memorable scenes I’ve ever seen. I can’t be super-specific, obviously, but it involves a tight closeup on Mia Goth’s face as a myriad of conflicting emotions play across it for an uncomfortably long time. It is a shot that beggars belief in its sustained, awkward commitment to conveying the character’s particular brand of psychosis. The scene’s impact is owed partially to director Ti West’s devotion to the concept but primarily to Goth’s performance, which straddles the line between Meryl Streep in Out of Africa and Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead 2. It would be the perfect litmus test to discern whether Pearl is for you, except that it is the final shot in the movie. So instead, it will either cement the film as a classic or reinforce your distaste for the preceding two hours of screen time.
I truly enjoyed X, the West-directed homage to 70’s exploitation cinema that featured a career-making dual performance from Goth. When I learned that the two had collaborated on a prequal film, I was very excited to see more from the duo. However, instead of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired cinematography of X, with its grainy film and sepia tones, Pearl takes us to early Hollywood with hyper-saturated technicolor and production design that feels transparently like a series of sound stages. The aesthetic shift makes sense because we have gone back to the 1910’s to spend time with X‘s primary antagonist as a young woman, and also because the plot is a twisted version of an old-fashioned Hollywood trope. Pearl is stuck on the family farm with her strict mother and invalid father, abandoned by her soldier husband who is off fighting in WWI. She dreams of being a star, but would settle for a life away from her dreary existence working the farm that barely sustains her family. The biggest challenges to that dream are a lack of options and a lack of talent, or at least the type of talent that would elevate her beyond her current status. Her biggest assets are an unwavering belief that she does possess star-making talent, and a complete lack of morality that might hinder her from eliminating any perceived threat to her success with extreme prejudice.
Goth plays Pearl as completely unhinged and divorced from reality. Its a performance that is at turns comical, shocking, even sympathetic, but never less than mesmerizing. To me. It is the type of thing that straddles the line of absurdity, and I could easily envision someone watching Pearl and thinking that Goth goes way too big with her performance. For me, it is pitch-perfect and impressively committed. The other challenge for some viewers will be that this barely reads as a horror film. Sure there is an axe-wielding psychopath, but the plot does not have the same slasher-movie shape that X embraced. I was enjoying the film the whole time, but I can easily point to these concerns because they were floating around in the back of my mind until late in the third act. Then, a scene came on in which Goth has a monologue where it dawns on another character who Pearl really is, and everything just clicked for me regarding her performance and regarding the story that West wants to tell. By the time that final shot lingered and lingered, I was fully bought in. The rumor is there may be a third collaboration between West and Goth following X‘s final girl, and I can’t wait to see what (presumably 80’s) aesthetic West will adopt for that one and how Goth will surprise me again with the unpredictable choices she makes.
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