Here’s a classic case of: ”Be careful what you ask for.” Earlier this year, Ti West made a fun sexploitation horror film called X set in 1979 on a semi-rural Texas farm owned by an elderly couple. X gets nuts when the white-haired wraith-like shut-in Pearl goes on a rampage. It would seem we couldn’t get enough of this, hence, Pearl –the story of the homicidal loony tunes pitchfork-stabbing grandma as a young girl emerged in the wake of X.
It’s kinda like if they made a horror entitled “Li’l Jason” or “Mikey Myers.”
Title character/writer Mia Goth had the joy of playing both a budding porn star and the murderous septuagenarian? Octogenarian? in X. In Pearl, set 61 years earlier, Mia only plays the title role. But damn if she didn’t play the Hell out of it.
Pearl longs for something … anything. She thinks she wants to be a star, but I suspect she’s just stir-crazy. The year is 1918. Her husband is away at war, so she’s stuck on the farm with her warden-like German mother and a father paralyzed by the Spanish flu. It doesn’t take long for us to see Pearl has a taste for blood and an indifference to murder and/or suffering. A goose wanders into the barn while Pearl is feeding the critters. Pearl offers a pleasant smile, kills the bird with a pitchfork and immediately feeds it to the family alligator. So, get used to this, huh?
Trapped by her surroundings, her outlook, and her mother, Pearl has to risk a fair amount of well-being just to
catch a movie at the theater in town. This action inspires her to seek a profession as a chorus girl and introduces her to the projectionist (David Corenswet). On the bicycle ride back home, she all-but-molests a scarecrow pretending it’s a real dude. Well, could be pretending; Pearl is kinda messed up, y’know? As for the scarecrow … do you think it cries “Dorothy” in the throes of passion?
This is one of those films where it’s just a matter of time before the blood starts flowing. True to her name, Pearl looks like a gem and behaves as if she’s been stuck inside an oyster for years. I’m not sure anything in her makeup will endear you to Pearl … yet she’s not quite a “villain you love to hate,” either. I can be empathetic with a character who cannot wait to leave the farm. I can be empathetic with a character whose mom is a Nazi (I guess “pre-Nazi” given the time period). But once the teenage angst comes with a body count (thank you, Heathers), you tend to lose me. I found this prequel watchable, but cringe-worthy and unsettling at the same time. I enjoyed X a great deal more than its prequel.
There once was a woman named Pearl
A run-of-the mill regular farm girl
But when life gave her bitch-work
She took out her pitchfork
And decided to give murderin’ a whirl
Rated R, 103 Minutes
Director: Ti West
Writer: Ti West, Mia Goth
Genre: Cringe
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Your insane blind date
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who couldn’t get into the protagonist
