A prequel to the ripples of homage found in X can only continue in that tribute act form. Pearl may present itself as an MGM feature of the 1930s, but it is as far removed from those stuffy times as any filmmaker relying on phantom horrors and bloody disgusting work can be. Shlock and gore at its finest, director Ti West doubles down on what made X such a chilling feature and consolidates what he is good at. But what West is good at is a shared love of other feature films. A noble quality to hold for any filmmaker, but just how much can a work thrive on depicting former cultures of horrifying quality and intent? Where is the line between homage and parody? West has found out accidentally in this piece co-written between West and lead Mia Goth.
Marking itself as a prequel and origin story at the same time gives Goth plenty of room to tell the tale of haunted houses and horror surprises that linger in X. How West and Goth explore the eponymous character is of no interest. All they manage are slightly unsettling set pieces and the occasional kill that lacks the surprise or gore found in the predecessor. What began as a homage to the MGM horrors and the abuse dealt to the starlets of the time turns into a basic setlist of riffs that conjure up imagery of The Wizard of Oz. An equivalent experience would be playing a Slipknot album over the top of the Judy Garland-led feature. It would work better than this brief pandemic project, which isolates its few cannon fodder characters and prepares them to meet their demise more often than not.
Small-room productions with weak interactions come from scriptwriting more than the location or intent. Goth is on top form and deals some heavy blows from time to time, but most of it is self-indulgent, with a lengthy monologue explaining rather clearly to the audience what Pearl is, what she hopes to do and the vanity that builds her character with simple grace. Pearl fails as a horror film simply through its lack of fear factor. It feels restrained and almost absent at times, with special effects dramatics leaving much to be desired and the montage shot of Pearl dispersing her victims something that could be shoddily cut together in an amateur, underground horror film. Pearl does nothing new. Neither did X. The difference is all in the delivery.
Where X was a strong and insightful homage to the glory days of exploitation in the 1970s, Pearl feels like a weak parody of the MGM days of The Wizard of Oz. That is the main comparison used throughout Pearl, with some generally acceptable moments of weird interest, from sex with a scarecrow to an alligator living nearby in a lake. Beyond that, Pearl is neither horrifying in its premise nor interesting in its delivery. A short slog that will rely all too heavily on the solid work Goth provides. An underlying message of the Spanish Flu provides obvious and poorly used comparisons to the modern-day pandemic the world was set to deal with. Pearl slithers and grinds its way through notable commentaries without much to show for their inclusion, with slivers of gory glory failing to leave their impact, lacking the creativity and necessity to build on their consequences.
Pearl’s monologue is good. Her expounding on her “sins” to someone not equipped to handle a severe psychiatric disorder is a simultaneously sad and funny way of showing how little rural people had access to therapy in the early twentieth century.