(Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...or genre or theme...pretty simple. Today: it's the first two entries of Ti West's X-Factor trilogy, both of which came out in 2022 to increasing acclaim....)
("Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold. I'm not a big horror fan (Toast is the horror buff here), but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.)
X - 2022, d. Ti West - AmazonPrime
Pearl - 2022, d. Ti West - Rental
Horror is supposed to make you uncomfortable. It's supposed to upset you in some way. It's supposed to be a view of the world in its darkest light, which I suppose in the end is there to make us feel, in some small way, better about where we are. It's also supposed to excite, and, for a long time, titillate.
The marriage between sex and violence was firmly established in the 70's with exploitation films, but also in the news, with the very American phenomenon of serial killers targeting sex workers. Exploitation, slasher and modern horror movies, it could be said, started as a reaction to the violence, and a fascination we as a society have with these crimes, and the criminals who perpetrate them. Sometimes these films, like in a Peckinpah, Di Palma or Scorscse, the film is more interested in what makes the perpetrators tick, providing the audience a POV into the warped world, and some other times these film are just trying to bring the back-of-the-brain lingering sense of unease and dread out to the forefront.
Ti West's X is a step back from either of those lines of thinking towards an examination of an era, of a particular period in time, and ruminating on the marriage between sex and violence, but also reminding us in the background that there's another key participant in this throuple, religion.
We open with a farmstead, and a lot of blood. A sheriff and his team both in awe and repulsed by the gory scene they're stepping through. Cut back 24 hours. It's 1979 (the date filling the screen with big, bold American flag stylized numbers, reminding us that this is AMERICA) where we meet Maxine (Mia Goth), a cocaine-fuelled stripper being promised the world by her exceptionally congenial, smooth-talking boyfriend Wayne (Martin Henderson, Torque) as they head out to the same old farmstead to shoot an adult movie. Maxine is convinced she's going to be a superstar. In the van with them is easy-going porn starlet Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow, Christmas with the Campbells) -- who stylizes herself after Marilyn Monroe -- and her sometimes beau Jackson (Kid Cudi, Entergalactic) -- a Marine who served in 'Nam -- as well as cameraman RJ (Owen Campbell) - who thinks he's going to make "a movie" out of this trash -- and RJ's girlfriend he dragged along with him to do sound, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega, Wednesday), who is trying her damnedest not to freak out once she learns what kind of movie they're making.
They arrive at the somewhat dilapidated farmstead where they're renting the bunkhouse. Wayne encounters the octogenarian owner, Howard (Stephen Ure, Mortal Engines) who greets them with a shotgun and suspicion before he recalls the arrangements he made. He warns them to keep out of sight and to steer clear of his wife, as she gets confused and easily excited. They quickly get busy with the production. While Bobby-Lynne and Jackson are performing, Maxine tours the property, swimming in the nearby pond (which houses a croc, leading to the best shot of the film) and then spying Howard's wife, Pearl (also Mia Goth) who welcomes her inside with lemonade. Pearl looks at Maxine intently, making her uncomfortable. She downs her lemonade and goes to head back when Pearl start pointing out how pretty Maxine is, and how pretty she used to be, pointing at photos on the wall, where the resemblance between young Pearl and Maxine is uncanny. There's some sourness in Pearl's wistfulness, and the whole situation unnerves Maxine, especially when Pearl starts stroking her flesh. Maxine sneaks away when Howard returns from town, warned by Pearl of his jealousy.
Maxine shoots her sex scene in the barn, and Pearl sneaks out and watches, clearly curious about her new visitors, and titillated by what she sees. She brushes her hair and puts on an older lady negligee and tries to seduce Howard, who pushes her away, telling her his heart can't take it. Meanwhile, the evening sets and the crew sit around having a frank discussion about the nature of sex in cinema, the conversation mostly led by Lorraine, whose great trepidation about making a pornographic film, has turned into curiosity and she wants to be in the film. RJ protests, and Wayne takes him outside to have a chat about the liberated woman. RJ can't handle it. He goes to leave everyone behind, when he encounters Pearl, who tries to seduce him, but he is repulsed and is brutally murdered for his response (though it was likely his fate either way). Pearl, it seems, when not given what she desires, will take her pleasure in other forms.
By this point we're an hour into this 100-minute film when the first murder happens, and barring the ominous music that plays throughout, the tenor of the opening hour is not one of horror. It's a more thoughtful and considerate examination of 70's attitudes towards sex, and sex on film. As cited, films like Deep Throat and risquee European entries like Emmanuelle, were actually drawing mainstream crowds, as these types of adult films were being made with scripts and a strange air of respectability. There was a small window of time, pre-Reagan, when attitudes towards sex were becoming increasingly liberal. But throughout the background of X, there is, on every TV set we see, a televangelist preaching his sermon, demonizing the sins of the flesh. This is the conflicting nature of America, founded by pilgrims who were escaping an increasingly liberal Europe for a new land where their puritanical nature could rule, but also creating a land where liberty and freedom to be left to do as one pleases are founding tenets. There's inherent conflict between the religious puritanism and the rights and freedoms Americans should have (rights and freedoms for some, not for all). We see this conflict in Pearl, as well as in Lorraine, both drawn to sexual liberty, but being constrained by their religious upbringings.
t's a great looking film, with nearly every scene West shoots full of intention and purpose. There are some interesting edits, some rapid cuts back-and-forth between different things happening simultaneously, sometimes showing a parallel, sometimes juxtaposing. It's all quite clever without announcing itself as such. Very little feels forced here, and despite being pretty predictable in the broadest sense it's a pretty surprising film. I was expecting Texas Chainsaw Massacre but it's far more laid back than that.
I think the first hour (and the film in general) would have worked better had it not had the ominous music. There's a lightness to the crew making The Farmer's Daughter that is undercut by the score, and while there is a tension to Howard and Pearl's interactions with the younger players, it shouldn't be so heavily underlined that they're where the threat lies. X is promoted as a horror movie, and yeah, once the killings start, it's less pleasant, but also maybe feeling inevitable. But it's also not your typical slasher movie and it doesn't play your typical cat-and-mouse slasher movie games. At least half the deaths are somewhat comedic in nature, whether it be the surprise, or just the after-gags. The reality is Pearl and Howard are a rather frail 80+-year-old couple. They're only a threat because they're not that threatening.
But is X horror. Yeah, it is, but a very different horror film
Pearl (Mia Goth) is in her room admiring herself in a dress, twirling, dancing, joyfully, until her mother appears, stern-faced, disapproving, admonishing her in German for taking one of her dresses without permission, and that she has chores to do out in the barn. Pearl comes out the front door in her pigtails and overalls, a very Dorothy Gale look professing some sort of innocence, a stark contrast to Goth, naked under her overalls and insinuating sexuality in X. Pearl dances around the barn as she pitches hay and talks sweetly to the animals, professing something more out of life. You could swear she was about to bust into song. In comedically waddles a goose, quacking away, and Pearl's eyes and expression change. The pitchfork in her hands turns from dance companion to weapon (not forgetting how she wielded it in X), and she stabs the goose, and we see her take the pitched goose through the technicolor woods (looking SO much like a studio set, and yet it's not) to the docs where she feeds the goose to the gator in the pond.
In a short span of time Pearl distinguishes itself tonally from X, but the connective threads are pretty much everywhere, sometimes overt, other times subtly. Whats clear is these films are companion pieces, not independent works, though they both satisfyingly exist on their own.
Pearl continues with its technicolor daydream from start to finish, with its score from Tyler Bates and Tim Williams staying with the sweeping orchestral, era specific sound, with only a hint of downtempo menace at very specific and apt timing. Though so bright and colourful, it's not a happy film (it's a follow-up to a horror film after all, providing an origin story for X's chief antagonist), as Pearl is dealing with her severe (very German) mother, an infirm father, a husband who left her to go to war, and the strains of a pandemic (Spanish Flu), all of which are constraining her to the farmstead when she desires nothing more but to go out into the world and dance.
When she goes into town (primarily to retrieve father's medicine) she steals time to go to the moving pictures, loving the dancing movies the most. She meets the projectionist (David Cornsweet), a dashing, handsome bohemian who flirts heavily with the pretty little lady. She later fantasizes about him, while also being angry about it ("NO! I'm a married woman!" she yells, almost child-like to no one). She learns from her sister-in-law that there's an audition in town for a role in a regional dance troupe, where they'll go from town-to-town across the state bringing joy to the townspeople and hospitalized. Pearl knows Mama will never allow it, but she's doing it all the same.
She's constantly fighting with Mama, but at at one point her mother tells her about her reality, about the dreams she had that never came true. Mama is pragmatic, a realist, despite wanting more, she can't even contemplate anything other than where she is, and she resents Pearl's youthful ambitions. But also, Mama sees what Pearl does when she thinks no one is watching, she knows there's something wrong with her daughter and she fears what she might do out in the world. Pearl steals away into the night to visit the Projectionist, who shows her a little film he picked up in Europe, which is an old-timey stag fillum, and he fills Pearls head with dreams of taking her to Europe and putting her up on the big screen in movies like that. Pearl is not repulsed by the idea or the film, but mostly she just likes the idea of leaving and being a star. Pearl puts every hope she has into the audition, she must get the part, and as the audience, even though we suspect (or know from X) what lies beneath, Pearl's aching desire is so emphatic we want it for her to. And the audition is a spectacular moment in film,
In some ways Pearl is a coming-of-age story with fits of violence, where this young woman is faced not only with the crushing realities her mother has been trying to prepare her for, but also with the aching realities of self. In the last 20 minutes of the film, Goth delivers a 5-minute monologue which lays out, plain as day, every truth Pearl knows about herself in devastating depth. Yes, she's a psychopath, but she doesn't want to be, and she doesn't know how to deal with it. It's just another part of her life that she's trying to escape.
To answer the question, Is it horror? No, it really isn't. At all. It's a suspenseful drama, a character study, a stylistic exercise, and a piece of a larger puzzle all at once. There are so many parallels between Pearl and Maxine that it would almost suggest something paranormal (except no such suggestion is ever made). There are character traits, ambitions, and moment that resemble each other, and somehow in X, Pearl sensed that all in Maxine, she basically saw herself, and was horrified, more by who she no longer was than by what Maxine is. There are such strong connective tissues between Pearl and X, big and small things that will likely more clearly reveal themselves when the third part of this trilogy is released, but the link of sex, violence, religion and Americana seems to be at the heart of it.
The technicolor daydream of Pearl is so beautiful to watch, so inviting in a way that no other horror (or horror-adjacent) film that I can recall is. Toasty has been following West's career on the blog and noted with his review of X that West kind of stepped away from horror filmmaking for a while. X as a return to the genre posits that he clearly has something more on his mind, and Pearl quite confirms that he's out to reinvent if not the genre, than himself as a filmmaker. I can't wait to see what MaxXxine has in store.
