2022 has been a banner year for slasher movies.
The revitalization of the genre has been going on for at least the past half-decade with successful legacy sequels like David Gordon Green’s Halloween and Nia DaCosta’s Candyman and new franchise-starters like Happy Death Day. But this year has seen a sharp uptick harkening back to the glory days of the subgenre. In January, the Scream franchise threw its knife into the legacy-sequel ring. In classic meta fashion, the film walked the fine line of being effectively scary while also skewering the concepts of elevated horror and even legacy sequels themselves. This summer, Halina Reijn delivered a fascinating update on the slasher template with Bodies Bodies Bodies, an Agatha Christie-esque Gen-Z tale — And Then There Were None for the terminally online.
In March, horror maestro Ti West returned to the genre for the first time in nearly a decade with X, a surprisingly thoughtful and nuanced take on the sordid slashers of his youth set in the world of ’70s indie porn. Now, West returns again for Pearl, the prequel to X and part two of what is reportedly his filmed-in-secret exploitation trilogy. Following the sleaze and cheese of X, Pearl comes off as a Douglas Sirk-directed grindhouse picture, complete with a grand, sweeping score from Tyler Bates and Tim Williams, whizzing scene transitions and chromatic visuals.
The film follows Pearl in her life on the family farm. She bides her time until her husband returns from World War I and yearns for more than what the quiet life offers her. Above all else, Pearl wants to be a famous dancer in the “pictures” she sneaks off to watch during trips to town to retrieve medicine for her disabled father. Something isn’t quite right with Pearl — she says as much herself — and that slightly eerie feeling gives her quite the drive to get out of this place.
With X, it felt like a curious decision to have Mia Goth play the dual roles of Maxine Minx, a member of the group making the porn film, and the older version of Pearl. Why bury this unique, striking actress under a mountain of gloopy latex just to inhabit a nearly dialogue-less character, especially when she’s already playing the ostensible lead of the film? The answer is that West found something special in his newfound partnership with Goth, who co-wrote Pearl with West and will presumably do the same for the forthcoming third film in the series — MaXXXine, a sequel to X.
After giving a good-but-not-groundbreaking performance in X, Goth turns every dial all the way up for a full-on technicolor freakout here. Her final-act monologue rivals that of Rebecca Hall in Resurrection for the year’s most unhinged horror soliloquy. Goth is channeling Sissy Spacek in Carrie, employing the same sort of aw-shucks innocence wrapped up in a repressed murderous rage. Tandi Wright, who plays Pearl’s mother Ruth, is on the same Carrie wavelength. She recalls the mama-knows-best domineering of Piper Laurie in the 1976 horror classic.
If we can’t get Brittany Snow and Kid Cudi onstage at the Oscars performing their acoustic cover of “Landslide” from X, then Goth and Pearl's talented makeup and prosthetic artists need to be invited.
In X, the rural setting and scratchy ’70s aesthetic conjured a founding document of the slasher genre — The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (a franchise that also had a legacy sequel this year). But in Pearl, it's the twisted family dynamics, complete with a grotesque dinner sequence, that invoke the 1974 masterpiece.
Even since the early days of his VHS-core chillers like The House of the Devil, West has always known how to navigate the often minute distinction between creative homage and lifeless re-creation. His films are indebted to horror movies of the past, but they always have a fresh, modern perspective.
If Pearl doesn’t quite reach the lofty heights of iconic films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the titular character, thanks to a fully committed performance from Goth, is sure to stick in the minds of horror aficionados like a pitchfork through a goose.
