We arrive at the final day of SCARETOBERFEST!
There’s a shot in “Texas Chain Saw Massacre”, a slow-moving sequence following behind a girl in short-shorts as she makes her way towards what we now know is the Sawyer residence. Like many of the horror films of the era, the moment is loaded with sexual aggression – someone is watching this girl, and violence is about to follow. The moment is titillating in that it invites us to delight in the presentation of her body, as a cheap thrill through being sexualized, with the promise of being violated after. A sop to the sociopathic males in the audience as the perfect sexual interaction – seduce and destroy.
It’s this danger that frames the threat against characters in “X” and “Pearl”, two of Ti West’s trilogy centered on showbiz-flavored slashers. “X” takes place in a facsimile of that Sawyer house, a Texas farm owned by an elderly couple allowing a young crew to film a movie at the location. These are not the celluloid dreams the couple expected, though. This is a crew working on a seedy skin flick, young performers and creatives trying to create termite art on the lowest rungs of the industry. Despite what would follow in the next two films, this is an ensemble. Yes, the marvelous Mia Goth is onboard as Maxine, but at least in this first film, she is more of an arbitrary Final Girl. It’s hard to spot the “virginal one” when everyone is shooting porn.
West is clearly a cinephile, and his interest in scares is very much side-by-side with his own desire for film critique. Not just smitten with the behind-the-scenes minutiae of the adult film world, he also spends a great deal of time nailing the aesthetic of the porn film itself. Not the scenes you’d think, of course – the between-sex interstitials meant to be a plot, the entendre-laden dialogue, the curious roving camera, the performers hoping to bring more out of the flimsy text, on a quest to imbue their physical dalliances with a greater meaning. At one point, there’s a debate between the film’s director and the crew about deviating from the script. The director wants to create a unique work of art, but his possessiveness manifests in a fight to maintain the film’s text, his text. It’s a sly argument as to how the will of the seventies auteurs, now heavily canonized, may have been part of a selfish artistic inflexibility.
That elderly couple, though, are not too fond of what’s going on inside the barn at night. What’s interesting is the tension between the two. The patriarch seems like he wants to protect his wife from these godless young fornicators. But what he doesn’t realize is that he has to save the crew from wife Pearl. It turns out Pearl has complicated feelings, both of contempt but also jealousy. West doesn’t overplay his hand here, but Pearl is often embracing being a voyeur, observing what’s going on, wanting to somehow be a part of this youthful bacchanalia. She takes a particular interest in Maxine, an idea fueled by stunt-casting Goth in both roles under fairly-different makeup jobs. The ballad of blood that erupts is above-par for the genre. When it comes time to let the blood flow, West knows how to refresh and reload as far as slasher thrills.
Providing a rich subtext to “X” is “Pearl”, which retreats to 1918, revisiting one of the first film’s killers in a new light. Young Pearl (a returning Goth) is set for a most unremarkable life, tending to her infirm parents on a farm in Texas and waiting for her soldier husband to return home to a life of domesticity. Pearl is an obvious psych test – she craves love, which is why she dreams of being a chorus girl in the movies. It’s the only affection she knows, because she’s not getting recognition at home, from the absent husband or the elderly, unappreciative parents.
It’s this vague misunderstanding of love that leads her to a handsome projectionist (David Corenswet, your new Superman as of 2025). He shows her that there’s more than one type of movie star when he lets her peek at a stag film. Thus begins a coming-of-age for Pearl. This is a deceptively simple tale of a young person learning what we all learn one day – that there’s more than one way to get what you want. Unfortunately, she wants this love so badly (which she conflates with attention) that she’s willing to end lives to feel it, to gain that one moment of validation, the eyes of the handsome suitor on you, the confirmation of your worth with hands on your body. You can see how this can go wrong with someone as ruthless as Pearl. Especially because, as the film stretches beyond certain horror tropes, simply “wanting it more” isn’t enough.
“Pearl” is pitched as being through the eyes of a slasher, more or less, as we learn empathy for why someone would be moved to chop others to pieces, even when it’s unrelated to a character’s actual yearnings. But it shifts further into character study, as we watch Pearl deteriorate just as she believes she’s a flower finally blossoming. Mia Goth’s performance has already been worshipped, but it’s completely merited. She is both porcelain and cracked, and I cannot think of many other actresses who can pull that off in the same scene, let alone a full movie. I went back to look, and this was a tough year for Best Actress at the Oscars. But if you could have dinged Michelle Williams for category fraud (nominated for a “lead role” in “The Fabelmans” even though she’s clearly supporting), then they should have found a way to get Goth award recognition. That being said, I’m posing a hypothetical scenario where the voters get to nominate what they like as opposed to nominating who publicists and studios suggest they nominate. While we’re at it, why won’t the universe make me a billionaire? Also, I would like wings. Both to allow flight, and to eat, with dipping sauces.
We are a couple of days away from the election and I want to remind you of a simple fact: one of our Presidential candidates is a rapist. I’m not talking about criminality, I’m talking about naked reality. It’s not something that’s going to be discussed or litigated, it has become established fact, and there’s a severe lack of a credible counter-narrative beyond “Star Chamber” conspiracies. But we are talking about a sex offender in everything but name. If you believe other credible accusations, this is a serial predator. And again, there is a difference between the repentant sinner, and the unrepentant one.
So let’s really boil this down. How comfortable are you, as an American (apologies to my millions of international readers) making a sex criminal the leader of the free world? Or, put more succinctly, how comfortable would you be about, at least, letting sex criminals out of prison? A commenter reminded me recently that a lot of places place a greater weight on sex offenses than any others when considering if they will hire a person or allow a person education. The squeamishness around people with sex offenses is real, and I can fully understand it. And the way Donald Trump speaks of women is not unlike all sex criminals, many of whom saw women as objects to attain, items of pleasure. Not actual living, breathing people, unless they were mothers. Baby dispensaries. That isn’t only sex criminals, obviously. But then we go about setting low bars and such.
Just so everyone is clear about this, we’re discussing a man who, when accused of rape, he doesn’t say, “I would never rape someone,” nor does he show compassion towards the accuser. Instead, he says, “Eh, not my type.” Let’s not take lightly the implication – that a man has a “type” of woman he would pursue without consent. That somehow, sexual assault might be warranted, as long as the man is granted the choice. Is this something you feel about your sisters? Daughters? Mothers?
The government only started tracking populations of sex offenders in 2019 (which is insane considering there’s a whole registry for them), but as of this year there are well over 700,000 sex offenders in America. Most of you, if you had this information, would be discomforted knowing these people, who are down the street, shopping at your favorite stores, dating your friends. But the fact is, a lot of these men and women did time, they were punished. And a great deal of them are ashamed of their actions and the victims they hurt. So imagine one of those 700,000 sex offenders sounded like Donald Trump, claiming women who spoke of assault weren’t his “type”, and he wanted to move into your neighborhood. Now imagine he’d actually be in charge of your neighborhood. Is that what you want? Think about this. And vote.
SCARETOBERFEST has been a delight, and now it ends! Don’t worry, there are plenty of other horror titles we will discuss in time. In the meantime, join us next week for five days of CHASTAIN!
This is EXACTLY the type of writing about film I want. Thank you. Connecting movies to the real world is what it is all about.
I think people live in denial about what that man really is. Deep deep denial.