“Step 3: Get Ahead Of The Competition”

It’s beginning to look a lot like Halloween and there’s no better feeling for horror fans than when a new genre film releases in theaters. Especially when the film in question, Pearl, is a slasher. Ti West’s second film in his slasher trilogy sees everyone’s new favorite murderer introduced in X in the prime of her career on a journey to become the biggest star in the world. Now a new teaser for the prequel shows that she’s not the only one in her little town clamoring for fame.

The new spot is the third step that someone needs to take to have the “X-factor”. Practice makes perfect and look your best we’re the first two steps. Step three is “get ahead of the competition” or, in Pearl’s case, kill the competition. The footage gives us the classic setup that there’s a dance audition in town. However, the only problem is they’re only taking one person to become a star. Of course, it has to be Mia Goth's Pearl. Chaos ensues as we see our slasher villain chasing Emma Jenkins-Purro’s Misty, in clear duress, with an ax. She also sets someone on fire, presumably her mother. These are morbidly interesting shots with West’s influences gleefully front and center.

Pearl has fully arrived as horror’s next big icon. The self-titled prequel takes everything that made X insanely masterful only to throw it into a blender with The Wizard of Oz and Looney Tunes. This crazed character's quest for fame is drenched in technicolor wonder and her rainbow is painted with the blood of her enemies. Pearl will stop at nothing to leave her farm of dying dreams behind.

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The most tragic part of it all, this murder spree comes from a very relatable place. We have all felt that desire to leave home for good and pursue our dreams. On top of that, most of us have had that fear of those feelings getting repressed in the pit of our stomachs. Pearl is the embodiment of those intimate terrors coming to sinister life. The monster that could spawn from a broken dream if the world isn’t too careful. That’s what brilliantly grounds this heightened slasher. There’s a little Pearl caged up inside all of us, and we’ve all had or had people in our lives that we consider competition. The only difference between us and people like Pearl is that we know how to control those monstrous feelings towards our “enemies”.

Pearl is now in theaters and living out her dreams of becoming a blood-soaked star. If you have what it takes, you can watch the new X-factor teaser on Instagram, and the full trailer down below:

Shane Romanchick is a TV and Movie News Writer for Collider. He also runs his own blog entitled Entershanement Reviews where he writes about and reviews the latest movies. In his free time he loves going for runs and playing with his beagle Butterscotch. When it comes to movies, he is a huge James Bond and horror movie enthusiast.

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