Pearl

Released the same year as its predecessor, X 2022, Pearl is a prequel centering on Mia Goth's elderly character in 1918. Here, Pearl is a young farm girl aspiring to be famous by becoming a chorus girl while living with her domineering mother and ill father, all the while her husband Howard serves in the war. Feeling despondent over how her life is going and befriending a projectionist who shows her a stag film, Pearl's mental state starts to unravel leading to violent moments that she starts to enjoy. Things come to a head when an attempt to audition for a dance troupe goes wrong which ends in a bloody conclusion. Whereas the first film was a straightforward slasher film with homages to the genre and porn of the 70s, this one is more of a psychological thriller with the look and feel of Golden Age Cinema. Goth not only returns to act, but she also cowrote this one with director Ti West and it's absolutely brilliant. The story, dialogue, and character development are all well done and manages to be even better than the first film. While Goth only plays one character this time around, and she did give strong performances in both, her performance in this one is so far the strongest. There's a long shot monologue Pearl gives near the end of the film, confessing to things she's done, that Mia nails, though it does go a bit too long. Then there's of course Eliot Rockett's cinematography that is not only beautiful and detailed but captures that Golden Age era the movie is trying to capture. Horror films often get a bad reputation for being lazy, repetitive, and many other complaints, but Pearl proves that reputation wrong. Over all: 100%

2022 top list so far:

1. Top Gun: Maverick

2. The Black Phone

3. Nope

4. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

5. The Northman

6. The Batman

7. Pearl

8. Lightyear

9. Dog

10. Everything Everywhere All at Once

11. X 2022

12. Scream 2022

13. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

14. Bullet Train

15. Thor: Love and Thunder

16. Jurassic World: Dominion

17. Sonic the Hedgehog 2

18. Uncharted