by Eric Lindbom
William Henry Pratt didn’t spell fright, so he was redubbed Boris Karloff and Ed Wood’s spooky chanteuse Maila Nurma went by Vampira. While Mia Goth’s last name seems like ideal horror re-branding it’s for real and so is her acting.
In Ti West’s Pearl the British actress digs deep, and gets under our skin, as a WW I wife stranded on a farm during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1915, a time of quarantines and masking sadly too familiar to us. Goth, who co-wrote Pearl with talented, prolific horror director Ti West, has a charismatic odd duck quality with an open face, wispy eyebrows, bulbous eyes and blood red lipstick. My two audience pals shrewdly compared her to Shelly Duvall’s pushy, socially awkward weirdo from Robert Altman’s Three Women.
Goth’s over eager Pearl lives in a fantasy world of silent movie dancers, practicing moves before an audience of barnyard animals while dreaming of escaping the drudgery of looking after her infirm, wheelchair-bound dad and her stern, ice cold German mother. We know early on Pearl is unhinged and potentially homicidal. As any true crime buff knows, many serial killers start, as Pearl does, killing small animals. She’s far from evil though. Like De Palma’s Carrie and the perfection-driven May (from Lucky McKee’s unjustly ignored classic) we empathize with her caged bird life while both fearing and rooting for her eventual murderous crack up – liberating for her but not her victims.
With bodacious, candy colored cinematography, Pearl is stylized to the max and the florid opening credit fonts and the soap operatic score by Tyler Bates (Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool 2) promise camp overload. Yet these tasty trappings are spot welded to the character’s dreamworld psychosis and entirely fitting.
More than a few observers have likened the visual approach to the lush ‘50s soaps of melodrama master Douglas Sirk but that allusion won’t matter to most modern horror fans – when they hear Rock they think Dwayne Johnson not Hudson. More relatable for them, Pearl also feels akin to Robert Aldrich’s Grand Guignol horror melodramas like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? or Hush . . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte.
At his best, West keeps the powder dry (his slow burn House of the Devil is a less is more must) and those skills drive this gripping character study. Pearl’s momentous set piece is a marathon monologue from Goth, her disintegration terrifying a listener. That speech alone, more than a few have noted, warrants Oscar consideration (hey Frederic March won Best Actor for Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde). Indeed, some of the scariest moments are other characters slowly realizing quirky Pearl is certified batshit crazy. So a neglected, gifted roasted pig covered with maggots registers louder than an axe murder.
As you’re probably aware, Pearl is a prequel to (and more fully realized than) West’s X a buzzy work that made its mark with critics and audiences. A knowing nod to 70s drive-in horror, it doffed a chopped off head to Tobe Hooper’s trashy alligator romp Eaten Alive and particularly his influential masterpiece The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (see Tom Lavagnino’s upcoming “Halloween Scares” essay piece on same topic on this site soon).
I’m in the minority who feels for all X did right (particularly its ripe period feel with Mungo Jerry on the soundtrack) it was neither quite intense or dirty enough to deliver on its gotcha premise (amateur porno crew shoots at a farm and the unknowing owners take bloody offense). Kills were perfunctory and there was but one real cuticle chew — a drone shot of an alligator pursuing an unaware swimmer that brought to mind Julie Addams unwitting aquatic dance with The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
A lot of fun, X had a whiff of harmless fan service, but it did offer one resonant theme. In it, Goth played duo roles — Maxine a drawling gal dreaming of porn fame and (buried under make up) an elder version of the Pearl character, now a dissipated shut in jealous of the allure of the nubile young interlopers. X touched on her feelings of sexual obsolescence as Pearl does with her stymied aspirations.
Those who linger past Pearl’s closing credits will, ala Marvel, get a glance at the next chapter in the trilogy – MaXXXine where Goth’s surviving X character will presumably ‘make it’ in the now nostalgic-twinged world of ‘80s porn.
Eric Lindbom is a hardcore horror buff with a strong stomach, weened on the Universal classics from the ’30s and ’40s. He’s written film and/or music reviews for City Pages, Twin Cities Reader, LA WEEKLY, Request magazine and Netflix. He co-edits triggerwarningshortfiction.com, a site specializing in horror, fantasy and crime short stories with illustrations by co-editor John Skewes. He lives in Los Angeles.
