It was a very long time since I was blown away by acting performance, specially in a horror movie - perhaps the last genuinely excellent horror I have seen was 2017 "Get out" and nothing since had thrilled me as much as 2022 "Pearl". After the movie I had to do some research and found out this is a part of movie trilogy directed by Ti West who decided that each movie will be created in a different style - "Pearl" is a tribute to classic sweeping old Hollywood movies - together, these three moves create a coherent story, but they can also be enjoyed on their own. Since I never heard of this, I simply dived in "Pearl" and later made my way trough the rest.
"Pearl" is happening on a desolate, isolated farm around 1918 and we know it because it is time of Spanish flu and everybody is keeping distance, their faces covered with face masks. The main character is a simple farm girl Pearl (Mia Goth) who lives with her impoverished German parents and waits for the return of husband from WW1. There is not much joy in her life - after the stroke, her father is basically a plant in the wheelchair, while stern mother suffers in silence and makes life hard by insisting its all the valley of the shadow of death & prayers before meals, etc. The only distractions happened when Pearl is sent away to the local little town to get medicine for the father and here she catches glimpses of glamour on the cinema screen and daydreams imagining herself as one of the chorus girls. Slowly, we also get impression that not everything is right with her, as she gets more and more sucked in her fantasies and things get really complicated when she finds out about the audition for a new dance troupe, which she feels is her way out of the farm life and into the stardom ...
I won't spoil the rest of the movie (this is just a beginning in a nutshell) but after a slow start, it really gets extremely gripping and its all thanks not to excellent script but also to brilliant acting. First, I must compliment New Zealand actress Tandi Wright who is really powerful as a mother. She suffers in silence until the dinner where storm outside reflects the turmoil inside her mind and we find out she is literary as disturbed as her daughter. David Corenswet is also very good as a local cinema projectionist who flirts with Pearl until her bizarre behaviour turns him off (with dangerous consequences). But the movie belongs to Mia Goth who is so spectacularly brilliant in the main role that she became my new movie crush - her acting is out of this world, technically and physically a true perfection and honestly one would never expect such sensational acting in a horror movie. There are two scenes where camera is focused on her face and she just walks away with the movie. I enjoyed this so much that I even watched the rest of the trilogy, but this one is by far the best of them. It could be also because other movies were created in different styles and happened in modern times, while this one has a certain artificial patina about it that makes is it so special.