As embodied by MiaGoth in X and now Pearl, the modern scream queen is more empowered than ever, flipping the script on the old damsel-in-distress horror trope.
Ti West’s Pearl premiered at the 79th Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival to considerable critical acclaim. The prequel to West’s well-received ’70s slasher X, Pearl stars Mia Goth as the titular character. Having already played the older version in X, Goth continues to show her versatility as a horror icon, delivering another compelling and engaging performance with even more bite.
The scream queen then Horror has existed since the birth of cinema. Because of its nature, the genre usually included a female lead, who became the de-facto prey for the story’s antagonist, be it a monster or a human killer. From Greta Schröder in 1922’s Nosferatu to Julie Adams in 1954’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, the scream queen was ever-present in the genre. She usually played a demure and weak character, entirely at the monster’s mercy.
The film’s success spawned countless pale imitations, few with the original’s sense of lingering dread. Indeed, the late ’80s and early ’90s nearly drove the slasher to self-implosion by seemingly stretching it past its breaking point. On the brink of non-relevance, the genre received a much-needed boost from Wes Craven’s subversive and ultra-meta 1996’s masterpiece, Scream, a film that redefined the scream queen’s role.
However, the 2010s brought interesting changes. Shifting views and a slew of filmmakers willing to take risks meant that scream queens could be more experimental than ever. Robert Eggers’ 2015 supernatural horror The Witch introduced nineteen-year-old Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin, an unnerving young girl and the first of many game-changing female characters in horror.
The scream queen as the monster The idea of the female character as the monster is not recent. Cinema has toyed with it as far back as 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein with Elsa Lanchester’s iconic portrayal of the titular character. Films like Dracula’s Daughter, The Invisible Woman, and She-Wolf of London capitalized on the success of previous projects to deliver gender-bent versions of many of their established classics.
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