*NOTE: Spoilers for Pearl (2022)
Since the birth of the genre, horror has specialized in playing into societal fears of their era. By delving into a supernatural ethos, creators have been able to explore the greatest insecurities of their time whether they be Mary Shelley and her fear of motherhood or the racial division that drives many of Jordan Peele’s latest masterpieces. There’s something timeless about an author who knows how to dive into these issues and present a palatable story. They become more than spooky season entertainment and present a fractured mirror for future generations to know what was driving everybody insane.
The least likely name to join this list would be Ti West, who has done the unthinkable of filming an entire trilogy of films for a few million and releasing it within months of the prior. With X (2022), he gained acclaim for mixing violence with eroticism and commenting on the thrills that cinematic voyeurism provides the viewer. With a great cast and a loving tribute to 70s slasher graininess, it set the bar high. How does he possibly follow up one of the most acclaimed horror films of the year? By doing something even more expected. As evident by Pearl (2022) and its post-credit ad for Maxxxine (2023), things will be jumping around and likely creating a trilogy meant to comment on our relationship to cinema in its various forms. While Maxxxine exists in the high of sitting through Pearl for now, it also feels a little difficult to believe that it’ll even compare to what just happened.
With help from co-writer and star Mia Goth, Pearl quickly distances itself from X. The worst that can be said is that viewers will be missing extemporaneous foreshadowing. Even then, to enter Pearl’s (Goth) world is to see something provocative from the first minute. Set in 1918, Pearl is first seen looking into mirrors, believing that she’ll be a star. The many fragments of her appear before a black backdrop, showing the self slowly being deconstructed. It’s a look into her mind, a desperate chasm trying to escape a life of a mentally abusive mother (Tandi Wright) and a job on a farm.
One would be forgiven for thinking that the accompanying chipperness feels insincere as she takes to a barn to talk to animals, calling them her best audience as she vamps while picking up hay. It’s a moment that recalls Judy Garland’s technicolor gems, a childlike innocence that is abruptly destroyed by an outsider, an animal who (like her mother in the previous scene) walked in on her fantasy. Not knowing what to do, the break with fantasy emerges as she murders it and feeds it to a crocodile in a nearby lake. This is the title card image, a beautifully laced font of Pearl hiding the grotesque underneath as Tyler Bates and Tim Williams’ nostalgic score plays.
Goth gives an incredible performance here, managing to embody the Midwest naivety of someone who dreams of New York while only ever seeing it in Busby Berkeley-style matinees. Her escape is the cinema, away from the reality of a comatose father (Matthew Sunderland) and a WWI husband who may or may not return home from war. She is taught how to behave, believing that she is to be obedient to her husband. It’s clear that it’s been years since they were last together, where fantasies grow increasingly hostile as she tries to crush something inside. It’s a stereotypical Midwest fantasy. She wants to escape, to sing and dance for the troops. Based on how this narrative builds, one would be forgiven for thinking that she joins the ranks of Garland and escapes her Kansas. Spectacle lies on the fringes of this text with Pearl believing that it will guide her to some truer happiness.
For as familiar as the construct of Pearl ultimately is, there is one particular detail that elevates it. The deliberate choice to set it in 1918 means that it overlaps with the flu pandemic. The iconography is not unlike more contemporary attire, where Pearl goes into town donned in a mask, doing her best to cautiously navigate the small-town streets. Her hypochondriac mother is so scared of outside viruses that she even rejects a festive dinner from relatives, leaving it on the porch to gain maggots. West knows how to slowly turn the exterior environment from this gracious fantasy into a decaying madness, showing the weight of rejecting the outside world. This is not the world Pearl has dreamed of. There’s nothing attractive about Pearl’s world. It’s why she escapes to the cinema.
As she befriends a projectionist (David Corenswet), she learns the magic of the moving image. When he suggests that he would pay to see her in a risqué film, she buys into the belief, feeling her first moment of validation. On the screen, she could be immortal, travel to worlds beyond her neck of the woods. It’s there in the costuming, the breathtaking cinematography. Even in a later scene she rides her bike in a position not unlike Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz (1939), reflecting the ways that iconography becomes part of one’s identity. Her love for the projectionist is a perverse type of love, and one that’s not totally based in emotion. It’s the belief that knowing the right people will get her a one-way ticket to freedom. To Pearl, everyone around her is more a symbol than a person, and it may turn some off from the film. However, it also gets to the heart of how the film becomes a masterpiece.
Since 2019, the world has felt like an uncomfortable place to exist. From the early pandemic days where even going to the grocery store was a nightmare, nobody knew how they would escape it. While some live in delusion, most played out 2020 with social distancing and cleaning every surface, hoping it would make a lick of difference. It was a time of economic uncertainty, where life felt more fragile than usual. The idea of waking up dead tomorrow has left a traumatic weight on many, and I’d argue that West feels the same way. In a period where depression and mental illness have risen, the necessity for art to depict the struggle to escape a hellish landscape is necessary. While many have come close – I’d nominate Kimi (2022) for one – they’re not as willing to comment on the larger discomfort of struggling to be alive.
It’s there in the flu pandemic backdrop. It’s there in cinema, which has a timeless quality to it. If Pearl could step in front of a camera, she could be immortal and eventually find someone who validates her with love. A farm is a maddening place, where the fantasy could never be more than a depressing reality that you’re performing to cows. With family criticizing you for every decision that could make them sick, having to be shackled to parents whose independence is fading, there is that frustration of losing your prime years to isolation, where carrying a virus can mean life or death for the immunocompromised. How could one even fathom getting up in the morning?
Goth is a revelation throughout this film mostly because the film never goes where you think it will. Even the trailer manages to feel like a bigger story than what West delivers. The sense of greater potential, of starting anew, is unrequited and the stagnation grows increasingly unpleasant. Pearl’s fantasy of a technicolor life somewhere over the rainbow is never met and the frustration slowly comes out in every new disappointment. Whereas most would share similar anguish internally (likely to harm themselves from quarantine’s endlessness), the need for an external release is more thrilling as cinema. Throughout the bloodshed, Pearl destroys the artifice, tearing down symbols of innocence that should bring her happiness but don’t. Her marriage is largely tangential and lacks any comfort. She has failed to have any life of her own. No wonder she went insane while her blonde and pageant-ready friend Mitty (Emma Jenkins-Purro) - a name likely reminiscent of the short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" - seems to have it all together.
It is doubtful that a pandemic leaves any individual the same person they were before. Even anti-vaxxers are likely to experience some disconnect from a perceived reality. With contemporary American society falling apart, there is a struggle to feel like anything one does is valuable. Why build up a world with great things when nothing will reward one back? Where is the optimism? I don’t know that West necessarily is a nihilist, but Pearl does serve as a cautionary tale about how film does not solve anyone’s problems. They will go home and the maggots will still be eating the feast. Father will still be comatose. When nobody listens, the internal demons can’t help but overpower the mind, becoming the new voice of reason.
If anything, Pearl works as much as entertainment as it does a cautionary tale. While the entire film is this thrilling, uncomfortable look into a life of someone forced into solitude during a pandemic, it also works as something cautionary. Could Pearl’s life had been better if somebody listened to her? The choice to make her dreams unrequited is a bold turn of face from what many would’ve seen in the 1930s musicals and melodramas, where Garland would’ve smiled over the closing credits. Instead, there is a searing six-minute monologue where Pearl opens up to Mitty, claiming “I’m not a good person.” It’s the first moment where she has bared her soul to anyone, and it’s haunting, as if past the point of no return. When losing the chance to tour with a dance company, her life feels destroyed. While most would take it as a chance to try again, it’s clear that she’s too used to rejection. Mitty side-glancing the exits is the final nail in her psychological coffin. Nobody is there for her.
The final moments are among the most discussed, though usually without the greater context. In reassembling her life, the fantasy becomes something internal, relying on audience interpretation for the first time of something that has been largely external. The fantasy lingers on in a battered brain as she smiles for three minutes underneath the closing credits. Whereas the opening presented a joyful fantasy of violence, there is simply heartbreak here. Outside the frame is the maggot-ridden feast and dead parents. Her husband returns, but is that even real? What is real and further example of how well Goth navigates the anguish is that smile. She holds it in the way Garland would, waiting for the fish eye lens to close in and cut to black. But it doesn’t come, not immediately anyone. The technicolor trope slowly becomes haunting as her face twitches, eventually becoming haunting and eventually a perfect reflection of the film. Pearl has nothing left. Her desperation to make this fantasy real will continue to last. There’s no cutting to black. Her pain will linger.
It's true that Pearl works as a straightforward horror film. However, the intimacy that comes with its characters is something much more profound, using stereotypes and tropes to help the audience comment on why they use art as escapism. In a time where millions have died from a virus and others are devaluing health codes, how does one not go insane? There is a pain and honesty to the film that reflects something greater than its slasher tendencies. When we don’t take care of ourselves, how do we avoid self-destruction? The tragedy is as much at the hands of Pearl as it is everyone not expressing empathy. Her lack of ability to express herself ultimately backfired, and what’s left is an empty smile. Like X, cinema has a great way of commenting on our times and giving it meaning. The challenge is not losing one’s self too much in the fantasy.
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