After seeing X at the cinema last year, I was interested in seeing the movie that was the prequel to it…showing the path that Pearl took that ultimately ended with her becoming the serial killer as seen in X.
It was hard not to feel some empathy for Pearl, given how difficult her life was and the hard relationship she had with her mother. I didn’t really like Pearl as a character, but I did feel for the person stuck in a life that she really didn’t want, waiting for her husband to return home from the war and having to deal with an illness that a lot of people in the town were suffering from.
This movie did a really good job of feeling like a very old-style movie. Right from the start, I felt like I was pulled into the world of the movie…however, parts of it felt more like a stage production than a true movie. Almost like it was perhaps an idealised version of Pearl’s story?
It was interesting to see the progression of Pearl from a trapped, isolated wife to the serial killer that she becomes before the events of X. Right from the start, it is very clear that there’s something wrong with Pearl. After all, she goes from dancing in the barn, pretending that the animals are her audience, to killing a goose with a pitchfork and feeding it to an alligator…and that’s one of the very first scenes of the movie.
It was very difficult to see the condition that Pearl’s father was in during this movie. I wasn’t sure if he’d had a stroke, or if there’d been an accident of some kind…but Pearl had clearly had a very close relationship with her father, although some parts of it were a bit strange, such as Pearl bathing naked with her father in the room with her.
Parts of this movie were very gruesome, but I didn’t really feel much of a connection to many of the characters in this movie. A lot of them, I was seeing through Pearl’s eyes…and because she didn’t really seem to care about the people around her, that’s probably why I couldn’t really care about them either.
There was quite a creepy/intense scene towards the end of the movie, where Pearl picks up an axe and stalks after one of her victims in broad daylight…which was actually when a lot of the violence happened. That felt quite surreal, as a lot of the time in slasher/murder movies, the violence takes place at night time, or at least in a darkened house.
All in all, this movie was okay to watch. I wouldn’t choose to watch it again, but the atmosphere and feel of the movie were quite good. If you have seen X, this movie does show Pearl’s background, so I think it’s good to watch in that respect.
Ink of Blood 