Pearl - 2022

 It is rather peculiar, and it’s also a bit of a psychological drama, as many horror movies can be when they want to, because the monsters can often be people with something wrong in their brain, but sstill, I wouldn’t watch this again. I’m not a fan of horror movies, I must say, but I don’t think this character was really well depicted. It’s not scary, for one; also, it seems they played on her looking like a naive girl to maximize the shock of her murders, but instead she just looks a bit off. I thought for a while that she was a young naive girl, and then it turns out she’s already married… she wants to appear a girl with dreams but with a mother thata wants to break her wings, but actually she’s just a selfish prat with sadistic tendencies.

Well, details now: 

It starts with a beautiful, idillic farm in 1918, with Pearl waking up and dreaming of being a dancer, but her German mom is very tired, very worried and very strict, and needs help, and her dad’s infirmed, almost comatose. Her husband Howard is oversea, at war. She dreams of leaving, of dancing, of becoming a star. 

Right at the start, she feeds the animals in her farm and then she kills a goose to feed her crocodile. 

Howard’s sister Mitsi tells her that there will be an audition for dancers in town; Pearl thinks she’ll be able to do what she wants after her parents’ deaths, “if only they would just die”. 

Because of her desire to dance and go to the audition, she has a huge, violent fight with her mother, they yell at each other and then mom gets too close to the fire and goes up in flames. Pearl puts it down with water and then… she locks her in the cellar. 

Pearl goes back to the projectionist she met in town, they have sex and then she takes him home, but he gets nervous because of her weird attitude, like ignoring the persistent thud and lying about having a dog… so he tries to leave and she gets mad, yells at him and when he starts to drive away she kills him and pushes him and his car in the river.

She suffocates her father and then leaves for the audition with a pretty red dress. The audition doesn’t go well, they want something different, and she loses it when they tell her no she yells and cries, and thinks of her mom’s words, how she knew she’d fail. 

Mitsi walks her home, trying to comfort her, and so she tells her “try to tell me what you’d like to tell Howard”, I guess she was expecting a totally different speech. Pearl lets it all out, from how she hates him for leaving her here to all the rest: she attracted his attention because she wanted his perfect family and hoped he’d take her away, but he liked the life in the farm. Then he went to war. She knows she did bad things, she started with small animals, killing them made her feel good, and then there were her mom who meant well and her friend, and her dad who didn’t deserve it… 

Mitsi is scared now, obviously, and tries to leave. Pearl knows from what the judges said that they’d choose Mitsi (more American, more blond…)

Mitsi leaves, but Pearl goes after her and kills her. She chops her body up and feeds it to the crocodile. 

Her dream’s over now. 

At home, she hugs her dead mother, then sets the table with rotten food and sits both dead parents around it. 

This  is what Howard sees when he gets home. She smiles at him and keeps forcing the smile through the ending credits while she cries.

Mia Goth as Pearl

David Corensweet as the projectionist

Emma Jenkins-Purro as Mitsi