Pearl

Ti West shot this back to back with X on the same New Zealand sets. By his account X wrapped on a Friday, they were writing again on Monday, and back on set within a month. The reference points are not slasher ones. West first weighed a black and white German Expressionist look, then went the opposite way: The Wizard of Oz as his key model, a childlike and almost Disney palette laid over adult material. The farm sealed off by the 1918 flu epidemic carries a story of rejection under that gloss. Mia Goth co-wrote the screenplay, describing mornings of stream of consciousness writing that she sent on to West. The longest and hardest scene is not a killing but her confession, played in one unbroken take; West says they set it up like a stunt, everybody locked in place, nothing allowed to go wrong. Goth took the idea of holding on a single face from Steve McQueen’s Hunger, and the film closes by doing exactly that, staying on Pearl’s smile through the credits. A good fit if you want the peak of the horror to be a confession held in one take rather than a chase. Not for anyone waiting for X’s hunting rhythm, who will run out of patience in the long gaps between the killings.