Pearl (2022)

A mirror image of all ambitious women

​​There is a new sub genre of horror emerging. Not ghosts. Not demons. Not god damn carnivorous fucking plants.

Girl Rage.

Not the sanitised, glossy, hashtag-feminism type.

The ugly, blistering, relatable kind. The kind that simmers beneath a smile and whispers:

“If one more person tells me to be grateful, I’m going to set the barn on fire.”

Pearl (2022) is that genre at its absolute peak. A sequel-prequel-whatever that joins Empire Strikes Back and Godfather Part II in the Holy Pantheon of “follow-ups that outshine their originals.”

It’s not about jump scares. It’s about existential dread wrapped in gingham. Pearl isn’t just a villain. 

She’s our reflection. And that’s the scariest part.

Five Reasons We Relate to Pearl (Even Though We Absolutely Shouldn’t)

Rule #1: If your dreams don’t scare people, you’re not dreaming big enough.

• Relatable: Pearl wants more than farm chores and silence. She wants lights, applause, adoration. Same, girl.

• Not Relatable: Most of us don’t rehearse our big break by straddling a scarecrow in a field and whispering sweet nothings into its burlap ear.

  
  

Rule #2: Routine breeds madness.

• Relatable: Caring for a disabled father while your mother critiques your very existence? That’ll crack anyone.

• Not Relatable: We decompress with chocolate and doomscrolling, not by feeling perfectly justified in feeding a man to an alligator.

  
  

Rule #3: Wanting affection isn’t a crime.. Unless it is.

• Relatable: We’ve all been guilty of catching feelings for someone who was simply nice to us once.

• Not Relatable: The difference is we don’t skewer them when they don’t promise us eternal cinematic glory.

  
  

Rule #4: Politeness is just rage with better posture.

• Relatable: That dead-eyed smile you use when someone underestimates you? Universal.

• Not Relatable: Pearl elevates it to “host a dinner party for your parents’ corpses and beam like it’s Sunday tea.”

  
  

Rule #5: Ambition is holy — until it curdles.

• Relatable: Every ambitious woman knows the agony of waiting for her life to begin.

• Not Relatable: Pearl doesn’t wait. She doesn’t ask. She eliminates obstacles like she’s pruning roses.

  
  

Pearl is a portrait of womanhood so painfully specific and yet universally resonant: Being so terrified of a mundane life that you’d rather burn the world down than fade into it. 

Final Verdict: 5/5 - For every woman who is willing to set the world on fire.