FILM

“Barbarian” And “Pearl” Explore Horror Tropes

By Bryan VanCampen

It won’t o end me one bit if you skip my review of writer-director Zach Cregger’s “Barbarian” (20th Century Studio—Regency Enterprises—New Regency—Almost Never Films—Hammerstone Studios—Vertical Entertainment—Boulderlight Pictures, 2022, 107 min.), as long as you see it. e best way to experience the lm is the way I experienced it: knowing as little about the story as possible. Well, I knew Justin Long was in the picture, and I’ve been a big fan since 1999’s “Galaxy Quest”. I can con rm that Justin Long is in “Barbarian” but no way am I going to spoil how he’s in “Barbarian”.

No beating around the bush: the only lame aspect of the lm is its generic title. Like Kevin Smith’s 2010 “Red State”, “Barbarian”’s twisty plot just gets twistier as its perspective keeps shi ing and changing. I really can’t remember the last time a movie had me so unbalanced and uneasy from start to nish.

On a dark and stormy night, Georgina Campbell plays a young woman who has rented a rundown house on the outskirts of Detroit because she has a job interview the next day. She nds that a man played by Bill Skarsgard (Pennywise the Clown in the “It” lms) has also rented the house. It turns out the house has a basement with a particularly nasty back room. And that’s as much as you’ll get from me regarding plot. Trust me: I haven’t scratched the surface, and you’ll thank me later. “Barbarian” has a truly diabolical story to tell.

I hope Roger Corman appreciates that sixty-something years a er he made his AIP cycle of Poe lms, characters in horror movies are still creeping down dark, scary corridors. ey may be lighting their ways with ashlights or cell phones, but it’s nice to see they’re still creeping.

Ti West’s “Pearl” (A24—Little Lamb, 2022, 102 min.) is a prequel to this year’s “X”, shot back-to-back in New Zealand during COVID lockdown. If you haven’t seen “X” which follows a band of people in Texas circa 1979 that drive to an isolated cabin in the woods to make a porno lm, spoilers lie ahead that you might not want.

If West’s “X” is a thoughtful, funny and accurate homage to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic “ e Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, the prequel “Pearl” is even riskier and more stylized, a study of a burgeoning psychopath shot in 50’s Technicolor, the Douglas Sirk version of “Carrie” (1976). In “X”, Mia Goth played two roles, a wannabe porn starlet, and a decrepit EC Comics horror hag out to get the lmmakers; Goth was unrecognizable under extensive prosthetics, and I for one didn’t gure out the gag until the end credits. “Pearl” takes the hag character back in time to the previous pandemic in 1919, where Pearl (Goth) has married a soldier currently overseas ghting in WWI.

Pearl dances around the family barn, dreaming of movie roles and stardom so she can escape her small town, her domineering mother (Tandi Wright) and her paralyzed father (Matthew Sunderland). “Pearl”, which Goth and West cooked up as an idea while shooting “X”, is structured like a classic “I wanna be a star” melodrama, except that from the very beginning we see hints and glimpses that underneath Pearl’s go-get-‘em facade is a woman that doesn’t care about anyone but herself, to a psychotic degree. She kills a goose with a pitchfork in the opening scene, and she knows where the alligators like to gather at the lake….

Part horror movie, part diseased character study, “Pearl” doesn’t feel like anything else on the shelf.

Mia Goth in “Pearl”, which is part horror movie, part diseased character study. (Photo: Provided)

“Barbarian” is playing at Regal Stadium 14; “Pearl” is playing at Regal Stadium 14 and Cinemapolis. RIP Jean-Luc Godard (“Breathless”, “Band of Outsiders”, “Alphaville”) U-pick: McIntosh, Empire, gala, and Fuji apples are ready now!

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