Pearl.2022 [better]

The keyword saw a massive spike in September and October 2022 due to the film’s release. Searches included:

In 1918, while the world was grappling with the Spanish Flu and the end of World War I, a young woman in Texas was fighting a different kind of battle—the battle against a "normal" life. Ti West’s pearl.2022

While X paid homage to the gritty, grainy slashers of the 1970s like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , shifts the lens back to the Golden Age of Hollywood. It is a loving, terrifying, and deeply unsettling ode to the musicals of Douglas Sirk and the melodramas of The Wizard of Oz , albeit twisted into a story of repression, ambition, and homicidal mania. The keyword saw a massive spike in September

The Submerged Self: A Study of Isolation and Artifice in Pearl (2022) It is a loving, terrifying, and deeply unsettling

The score by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams is equally instrumental. It utilizes sweeping, orchestral strings reminiscent of 1950s melodramas, but often warps the sound into dissonance as Pearl’s mental state deteriorates. The music tells the audience that something is wrong, even when the visuals scream perfection.

Furthermore, the film deals heavily with the theme of illness and isolation. Set during the Spanish Flu, the characters wear masks and fear infection, a theme that resonated deeply with 2022 audiences emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. The film draws parallels between the virus and Pearl’s madness—both are invisible, contagious, and deadly.