Editorials
No Place Like Home: The Cinematic Parallels of ‘Pearl’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’
Heads up! This piece contains MASSIVE SPOILERS for the movie Pearl. We kindly “axe” that you see the movie first and come back to read this after.
We all know the story. The story of little Dorothy Gale and the adventure she has when she’s whisked away to the wonderful land of Oz. The Wizard of Oz is one of the most timeless pieces of American literature ever produced, and the 1939 film adaptation remains one of the greatest (and most frightening) films of all time. This has caused numerous filmmakers of all genres and backgrounds to be inspired by the classic story in different ways over the years. Ti West brings it to a whole other level with his new film Pearl, the prequel to his slasher movie X that tells the story of the titular character and her descent into complete madness.
The film is littered with parallels calling back to the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, showing how the fairy tale story can be used in a different context to what we’re used to.
Right off the bat, the aesthetic and filmic style choices call back to the era of technicolor filmmaking. Technicolor is a process of filming color movies that dates back to 1916 and uses a three-strip system in which a modified camera would capture footage through different color filters (typically red, green, and blue), and be processed separately so that each strip would “print” various colors onto a finished print of the film. The result was a vivid display of color not commonly seen in this era of filmmaking, though one film in particular became famous for its use of the process: The Wizard of Oz. Pearl pays tribute to this by using a vivid color palette of bright reds, greens and blues, visually evoking the spirit of The Wizard of Oz.
From here we’re introduced to Pearl (Mia Goth), a lonely farmgirl who lives a quiet life on her family’s farm. She helps take care of her invalid father and is chastised constantly by her overbearing mother, Ruth. She dreams of a better life but her husband is fighting in World War I and her predicament has her with no place else to go. Pearl is a mirror image of Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz (right down to the pigtail braids). In that film Dorothy lives on a farm with Auntie Em and Uncle Henry and dreams of someplace “over the rainbow “ to escape the mundane life that she leads.
Pearl then rides into town on her bicycle to fetch her father medicine. When she gets to town we’re presented with a whole different world than the one Pearl is accustomed to. There’s music playing and people freely living their lives, and Pearl’s troubles melt away with an escape to the movie theater (with a side of micro-dosing). While here she also meets the projectionist (David Corenswet) of the theater she frequents (more on him later). This runs parallel to the iconic scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy is whisked away to the land of Oz. From the muted, drab palette of her sepia tone world to a technicolor fantasy only possible in dreams.
As Pearl heads home she by happenstance is led into a corn field that is home to a scarecrow that oversees the field. Curious, Pearl begins seductively talking to and dancing with the scarecrow, ultimately leading to a scene where she plays out a sexual encounter with it and imagines the face of the projectionist before having a violent outburst informing it that she’s married. Ashamed of what she’s done she heads back home with the scarecrow’s hat in tow.
The scarecrow’s design is obviously very much inspired by the design that was used on actor Ray Bolger in The Wizard of Oz. A noted dancer while he was alive, the filmmakers gave his character a dance number when he was introduced and Pearl repays the favor by having them share an intimate dance. Something to note is that the 1939 film’s script has an ending scene where the Scarecrow’s human counterpart, Hunk, leaves for agriculture college and Dorothy promises to write to him, implying a romantic connection.
After a visit from Pearl’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law, Misty (Emma Jenkins-Purro), she learns of a local troupe that’s holding auditions for their traveling show. Seeing this as her opportunity to escape her provincial life, she confronts her mother about auditioning for the dance troupe. Her mother has a violent outburst in response and talks about how she sacrificed everything to take care of Pearl’s father, including her dreams and goals. The argument reaches a boiling point when Pearl fights with her mother over the fireplace and mom’s dress ignites, setting her ablaze. Acting fast, Pearl proceeds to throw water on her screaming mother, enveloping her in a cloud of smoke, and throws her down into the cellar to die. This is the scene where we see Ruth evolve from the Auntie Em stand-in to a twisted metaphor for the Wicked Witch of the West, complete with a recreation of the climatic scene where Dorothy throws water on her and kills her in the process.
Pearl runs away into the arms of the Projectionist at the theater where they share an intimate love scene, despite her being married, and he also promises to take her to Europe. The next day he offers her a ride to her house so that she can prepare for her big audition. When he hears Pearl’s mother in the basement he confronts her and eventually catches her in a lie and decides to leave, suggesting he has no interest in seeing her again despite their quickly developing romance. Feeling scorned, Pearl snaps and proceeds to stab him in the heart, submerging his body (and car) in a nearby swamp. The Projectionist is a cold, heartless bastard in Pearl’s eyes, the movie’s twisted version of the Tin Man who infamously has no heart. She gets revenge by destroying his heart. It’s important to acknowledge that he’s the only character who shares any sort of intimacy with Pearl, an act usually only reserved for those in love.
In the final act, Pearl dons one of Ruth’s dresses – a long red dress as a twisted subversion of Dorothy’s iconic short blue dress that she wore when she visited Oz – and heads to her audition. After not getting the part in the troupe, Pearl and Misty head back to the farm where Pearl breaks down and confesses everything she’s done while also revealing her resentment for her husband for abandoning her and heading off to war. The dance troupe was to Pearl what the hot air balloon was to Dorothy, total wish fulfillment and an escape to the life that she deserves. Frightened of her confession, Misty attempts to leave as Pearl confronts her about making the dance troupe and not telling her. Misty in this scene could be viewed as being evocative of The Wizard of Oz‘s Cowardly Lion in her fearfulness of Pearl, and her hair also feels to be a nod to the curled locks that the Cowardly Lion sported in the original film.
After brutally murdering Misty with an axe, Pearl vows to “fix everything” and assembles the corpses of her parents at the dinner table to show that in her mind, things can return to normal despite everything that happened. Howard arrives home from war to find the rotting corpses in the dining room and Pearl donning her farmgirl look from the beginning. Knowing what we know from X, she never leaves the farm. Doomed to spend the rest of her days in a mundane existence and not living the life she felt that she deserved. At the end of the day Pearl realizes…
“There’s No Place Like Home.”
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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