Pearl - 2022
The reaction to Pearl has caused me some real consternation. It is a fine enough picture (as we’ll get to in a moment’s time), but one I found greatly wanting in comparison with its predecessor. So the euphoric praise I see being heaped on its head has left me scratching my own.
Despite that fact, let’s start with why I get it. Two words: Mia Goth. First, deliverer of one of the greatest monologues in film history past and present, she then steps up and TKO’s us with an end credit’s “pose” which shakes us to our core. Have you ever tried to smile so big and wide that it causes your eyes to water. Really? Cool. Then do this – strike the pose and hold it for two minutes running without pause. Yes, this girl has got the goods.
It's unfortunate though. For that precise moment, the one where the carefully constructed artifice finally comes tumbling down, holds within it the very problem at the heart of the picture for yours truly. By that I mean, this broad homage to a certain (Golden) era of Hollywood pictures and films like The Wizard of Oz. Simply put, it didn’t totally work for me (screening of stag film A Free Ride notwithstanding). Sure, the touchstones are nice enough. That is to say, I could locate myself in time. But the problem was that the entire first act of the picture (and much of the second) is, well, dull.
I can hear the rejoinder now – “This is a slasher flick. Take a deep breath!” I hear you, imagined interlocutor. I’m not asking for poetic character development of winsome side players for whom we’ll be prayerfully interceding when the axe starts to drop. No, the players are sketched just fine. BUT…besides carrying the slasher designation, Pearl also most bear the heft of a prequel and origin story on its shoulders. How well it accomplishes this will probably vary from viewer to viewer.
For my own part, I just found the entire aesthetic of X to be sublime. It captures a moment in time, a substratum of horror exquisitely well. And while its key players are nefarious and unworthy of real rooting interests, they are never lukewarm or…boring. In point of fact, they are the kind of figures we terror stans take glee in watching hunted and hacked to bits.
Still, I return to the top. This was a solid picture with a few great kills nestled inside some rich production design. Mia Goth is some kind of goddess in these roles, and I can’t wait to see what the third film brings us next. I’m a fan of Pearl, even if I liked the film which housed her old, wrinkled, and silver-haired iteration a great deal more.
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