PEARL is a Mia Goth showcase

  When I read reviews as a kid there was a lot I didn't relate to, or even understand, really. When critics would say things like "this actor disappears into the role" I lacked the capacity to really know what that meant because all I saw were my favorite actors devoid of the characters they were playing (no matter who he played, Bill Paxton was always just Bill Paxton to me). It wasn't until I saw Charlize Theron in MONSTER that I got it. There's a point in that movie where all I saw was Aileen Wuornos, Theron had literally disappeared before my eyes. I distinctly remember that giving me goosebumps and I wanted to turn the movie off - in fact, that's all I remember about it. Mia Goth, who also looks and acts a lot like Wuornos, brought back that tingle in my spine with PEARL.

  No one screams quite like Goth, she's both a Scream Queen and an absolute fucking banshee of a horror villain; In SUSPIRIA her wailing is agonizing and painful but in PEARL her shrieks are terrifying. It got to a point where I was anxious that she was gonna raise her voice again and, when she did, I couldn't wait for her to stop. But she also has a whispery, weepy last act monologue that's creepy, tragic, haunting, and darkly funny. Along with everything leading up to it, this makes for the best horror performance since Toni Collette in HEREDITARY. She is absolutely unhinged in this movie, a manic-pixie-nightmare of desperation, loneliness, resentment, and delusional hope that leads to disturbing cheeriness.

  What's also impressive is how quickly it followed X. You rarely see movies--especially [horror] sequels--get made quickly and still come out really fucking good. Red Letter Media talked about this: You can have it cheap and good, but it's not gonna happen fast (just look to Halloween 5 and Child's Play 3 for notoriously awful rush-jobs). Ti West was stuck in a 2-week pandemic lockdown after wrapping X in New Zealand so he and Goth wisely spent their time coming up with a backstory for Pearl and her eponymous prequel was born.

  As a character study this not only enriches a movie as lukewarm as X but operates on its own as a scary, tense, horny, funny, mean, and immensely sad portrait of psychopathy. That said, it's shot like a Golden Age Hollywood epic with lots of bright colors, sweeping landscape vistas, and warm lighting - it works to emphasize the brutality because, in Pearl's world, she wouldn't want it dark an' dreary.

 A