Author Archives: Kevin Singer

Anatomy of a story: Splinter

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When thinking about writing this piece you’re reading at this very moment I struggled to find the correct word to use to describe a specific type of incident. Every word I could come up with felt wrong, and for a writer, that’s one of the most frustrating feelings.

So I gave up searching for that perfect word and kept on working the concept for this piece in my mind and then I sat down to write it, which is actually similar to the writing process for my recently published short story, Splinter, a tale of brothers Nate and Hud and their tangled dependency.

Here’s where I got stuck. November/December 2023 was interesting for me. I had three events happen to me in quick succession, three intense events. Each one on its own was something to handle. The three piled up led me to write Splinter as an outlet for what I’d experienced.

Now, what to call them. My first go-to was Trauma. But that word is so overused in our current society, it’s become a cliché. If everything can be traumatic then nothing is really traumatic. Incident? Police procedural Events? Bloodless. Nothing seems to fit.

So I’ll switch over to the three things (ugh I hate that word) that led me to write Splinter. I’ll skim over the first two, for personal reasons. One involved a family member over Thanksgiving that painfully plucked at old childhood strings. The second involved a night that included shrooms and whiskey and a friend going through some serious shit, probably among the strangest nights I’ve experienced, which is saying a hell of a lot if you know me.

The third was a garden variety street attack I experienced, where I was slammed to the ground by some asshole. I landed on the concrete on my back, upper left side. He was long gone when I got up. I felt fine. I think I even laughed. The next day and for a couple weeks later I had a sharp pain in my back. I told myself that violence is just a part of being a man in this world, of being a human. In other words, cope and denial.

Mostly I can handle pretty much anything that’s thrown my way, at least that’s what I tell myself. But this triplet pile-on began to claw at me. My dissociative skills were having trouble managing them, so I turned to my what’s been my salvation: writing.

The concept of Splinter is an ancient one. It has its roots in the Genesis story of Cain and Abel: two opposite brothers who (can or) cannot coexist. The challenge I gave to myself was as follows. First, incorporate all three “events” to some degree. Second, thread the needle between realism and speculative fiction. Third, take a panoramic view of the lives of Nate and Hud.

None of this was easy.

First lets get to the technical challenge. Rather than focus on a single event, I chose to lengthen the story out and follow the brothers over several years. I jumped back and forth through time. I interspersed Nate’s “splintering” with his recounting events in the past with a part of the story set in real time. Not easy. What I did was develop different styles for each of the three sections in order to make it easy for the reader to know where they were at any given moment. This took tons and tons of work. Any writer who says that writing is easy is either not good at it, a liar, or incredibly blessed.

Regarding the speculative element, I absolutely love writing spec fiction: light horror, contemporary fantasy, sci-fi, anything with an element of unreality in it. I love how there are fewer limits on your imagination. I love the playful aspect to it. Could I add a speculative element to this story without cheapening it? I chose a very subtle approach (some might call it cheating). I embedded some speculative options, sort of a choose-your-own-adventure take on this story, letting the reader decide for themselves. I’d say it worked: this is the quickest turnaround I’ve had from writing a story to getting it published.

What about the emotional aspect? My primary goal was to work through those three events I’d experienced. How did I do that?

By being as honest as I could bear.

No story is successful unless you get to its heart, and in order to do that you have to cut through flesh and bone and bleed. You have to go to the most painful points. You have to leave blood on the page. That’s what I set out to do here. Most of Splinter is fiction, but some of Splinter is fictionalized, if not factually then emotionally. No, I do not have a drug-addicted brother, but I could transpose sets of feelings that are true. No, I did not witness (or have) a breakdown at my father’s funeral but I could connect feelings of abandonment.

And to me, that’s what successful fiction is: embedding your words with feelings that are true, even if the events are not.

A couple years ago I read the collected fiction of Flannery O’Connor, all of it, her short stories and her two novellas, from start to finish. She’s a master, and what she taught me is that you have to bleed on the page. You have to go to those places you don’t want to go. You can incorporate and reconfigure your own biography in your fiction.

Readers can tell when there’s something real on the page, and after all, isn’t that what we all want from the stories we read and listen to and watch– to feel something real?

Photo © Joel Remland, edited by Amy Dupcak. All rights reserved.

Trope or Choke: Episode 12

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The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less following these guidelines:

Setting: An operating room

Genre: Amish romance + Medical mystery

Trope: Decoding ancient texts

Characters: Acrophobic five-year-old math genius + Martian

POV: 2nd/future

The result:

Oddity

You’ll record these moments in your mind. You’ll transcribe them. For her. For posterity.

The boy will sit with his ankles crossed and dangling, refusing to look your way. “We’re 72,000 feet from the surface,” he’ll say. “If I plummet through that window it will take me 8.7 minutes to crash. My body will splatter in a diameter of 1.28 miles.”

With all the current strife, this laboratory on the peak of Olympus Mons is the safest place on Mars. Sometimes you forget he’s only five: frail and pale with wild hair. “I see. You’re afraid of heights. How about you turn your back to the window?”

He’ll comply and as he begins to swing his legs you bring forth the rune. He runs his fingers over it. “It’s not a forgery,” he’ll say. “These carvings resemble those on the Xanthe cave tablets.”

“Yes, Abigail found those stones.”

“Tell me about her again.”

You’ll sigh and stare out the window. You can almost see all the way to Drava Valles from here. You and Abigail were children when you met, seventh generation Amish colonists. You knew instantly you were fated to be together. You courted and pledged yourselves to each other, and when you both turned seventeen, you married. That first kiss was an electric shock. You can still feel it reverberate. “She was the most brilliant person I’ve ever met. And the most beautiful.”

“Sounds too good to be true,” the boy says, suddenly sounding too wise for his years.

“Isn’t every romance story?” You’ll glance over at the operating table. Empty. How much blood has pooled on this floor? You can’t think about that now. “Her life’s work was solving the mystery of the Xanthe tablet. And now with this rune we’ve discovered…there has to be a connection.”

“And you think it’s me?” the boy will ask.

Innocently. Too innocently. The first child genius was born nine months after the tablet was unearthed. This boy is the seventh. “Ever since we’ve found this proof that we’re not alone, there’s been so much turmoil. We have to know what they say.”

He’ll squint at the tablet, then the rune. “These markings form a code.”

“Can you decipher it?”

“Close enough, yes. It says, After one thousand years the soil makes them ours.”

A shiver will crawl down your spine. “We’ve been on Mars for nearly a millennia.”

“There’s more,” he’ll say. “Two in the blood will become three.”

“What blood?” you’ll ask.

He’ll look at you so mournfully that you’ll forget about his unnatural intellect and see him just as a child. The skin of his arm is so white, and in his silence you’ll find the answer. You won’t ask his

permission to draw his blood. He won’t resist. Under the microscope you’ll magnify until you hit his DNA. And then you’ll see it: not two strands entwined but three.

You’ll stare at this impossible Martian child, all the time wishing Abigail was here to witness this glory.

Battlestar Galactica Rewatch Part 3: Major Themes

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(For Part 1, see here; for Part 2, see here.)

Some years ago I wrote a post asking if Battlestar Galactica was too religious. To this day it remains one of my most popular pieces. Controversial, too. Not because of the meat of the post itself but because some people just don’t like religion. At all.

But let’s put aside whether or not religion is good or bad or whatever. Let’s instead focus on religion in Battlestar Galactica. After rewatching the entire series I can say with 100% confidence that one of the major themes of the series was in fact religion. Not just religion, but God and our place in the universe.

In my opinion, Battlestar Galactica was one of the most overtly philosophical television shows of this century.

In the series we had two separate camps when it came to religion. First were the 12 colonies, each named after a zodiac sign (astrology—a quasi religion in my view). The colonists paid reverence to the gods. Not a single god but a collection, patterned off of the Roman gods. Devotions, sacrifices, all of that.

One of the most religious characters among this religion was President Laura Roslin. I can’t say for sure what her level of faith was before the events in the story, but when we meet her, she’s just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She turns to the gods and takes solace in the scrolls of Pythia, which foretell of a dying leader who will take her people to safety. She’s beset by dreams and visions (drug induced?) that she takes for messages from the gods. Her faith, whether or not conditional, is in the forefront of the storytelling.

And then we have the cylons. The Caprica who appears to Gaius Baltar talks of one true God, a God who had a plan for everyone. It’s obvious what the writers were doing here: contrasting a pagan faith of offerings and visions against the Judeo-Christian singular God who had an individual connection with each of his creations (children).

The show ping-pongs between these two world views. It also provides an interesting commentary. For both camps, the colonists and the cylons, their religions/faiths don’t necessarily make them better or more virtuous. If anything, they use their religions to justify their actions. It’s pretty convenient that at first, the cylons view killing billions of colonists as part of God’s plan.

That’s a pretty dark view of religion.

But Battlestar Galactica is suffused with religion, with belief, with gods or God, and that’s part of what makes the show so interesting, even 20 years on.

The second major theme of the series is one that’s become a sci-fi trope: what is the definition of personhood? Are the cylons persons? In the series this question arises with the twelve humanoid-looking models. And no character best represents this than Sharon.

There were two significant Sharons in Battlestar Galactica. The first was Boomer, an ace fighter pilot in the Galactica. What Boomer did not know was that she was a sleeper agent. She believed she was human. She’d had memories implanted. She was in love with Galen Tyron (who turned out to be a sleeper cylon himself, though not one of the baddies). Then she was activated and shot Adama, nearly killing him. The series portrays her struggles to retain her humanity even as she loses her world.

Then there’s Athena, the other Sharon. On the cylon-controlled Caprica, this one pretended to be Boomer in order to trick a stranded Karl Agathon. She always knew just what she was. But somewhere along the way she fell in love with Agathon. They return to the Galactica and she dedicates herself to fighting her fellow cylons, along with having a daughter, Hera, the first human/cylon hybrid.

The series made a strong case for the humanity of both these Sharons. And there were other models thrown in there too. When colonists brutalize one of the Sixes, for instance, who’s the monster? On the flip side, let’s go back to the miniseries, when Caprica snaps the neck of a baby. Monstrous. Inhuman. But…she changes and grows and eventually leads a faction of cylons to seek another path with the colonists.

There’s a third major theme of Battlestar Galactica, and in my view, it’s the weakest. Keep in mind when the series first aired: 2004-2009. America was coming off 1) a major terror attack, 2) paranoia about sleeper agents, 3) critiques of blowback from decades of botched foreign policy, and 4) not-successful invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

At the time I remember reading commentary stating outright that the series was a response to the GWOT, and if you look closely at the storylines you can definitely see it. We’ve got an angry foe seeing revenge, a clash of civilizations, rampant terrorism, sleepers (cylons), and then the cylon occupation of New Caprica (one of the weaker storylines). We’ve also got brutality and torture galore.

As a larger commentary on American society of the zeroes, this comparison leaves me kind of flat. Don’t get me wrong, within the confines of the show, this all worked. But maybe I’d just not rather relive those dark days.

Next up: the hits.

Trope or Choke: Episode 11

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The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less following these guidelines*:

Setting: Outer space

Genre: Solar punk + Reddit comment thread

Trope: Sweating like a whore in church

Characters: Morally bankrupt real estate agent + Used tire saleswoman

POV: 3rd/past

*Note: writer’s choice to ignore two elements.

The result:

Everyone Has Their Price

“Listen, I just need to get this bucket of bolts over to the Taurus nebula. I’ve got these new colonists fresh from Europa and there’s this asteroid field that I know they’ll pay top dollar for. Bunch of useless rocks, but between you and me, they don’t need to know that.” Saul Treppingham told the bulk of a woman in grease-stained overalls.

She sipped her energy drink in long, slow draws while eyeing his expensive-looking suit. Her name tag read Dervish. “Looks like your little baby here’s about to blow a couple of space tires. I don’t know how you even managed to land her on this runway in one piece without blowing her all to bits.”

“What? These tires?” Saul kicked one with a shiny wingtip. “I just got them replaced on my last turn around the old sun. Supposed to be good for five million miles.”

Dervish took a long slurp from her energy drink. “You ask me, my tires will take you even further than five million miles. Ten. At least.”

“It’s not the tires. I swear. The dome light came on. All blinking and flashing. Danger. You know.”

“Oh, yeah, I know,” Dervish said. “That means the tires are about shot. Like I said you’re lucky you even landed here. I have some of the finest used rubber. No better secondhand tires for nearly a light year. Honest.”

Saul sighed and took stock of the mostly deserted landing strip, some godforsaken bit of real estate on an out-of-the way asteroid. “You know what you need here? Some development. Surely there’s some ore to be mined in the belly of this baby. Say, who’s the owner?”

Dervish squeezed both fists around the bottom of her energy drink. She slurped the last of the dregs like a hungry camel. Then she ripped open the pouch, jammed grease-stained fingers inside and licked them clean.

“God, woman. You act like you were raised among space pirates. Tell you what, why don’t you relay a message to your overlords. I’ll offer them a cool million for exclusive development rights. Really, I’m being generous.”

She watched him rake a hand through slicked-back hair. “My people settled this little old asteroid generations ago. It’s been our claim ever since.”

“Come on,” he said. “Everyone has their price.”

“Tell you what, I’ll give you replacements, half price. Beam back an offer, and I’ll see that my overlords get it.”

Saul unbuttoned his blazer. “I don’t really think the tires are the issue.”

“You want me to relay your offer or not?”

He chuckled nervously, then boomed a laugh. “Alright, as long as you promise.”

She slapped his rear. “I swear, sweetcheeks.”

An hour later she watched Saul Treppingham’s spacecraft zip away. She laughed as loud as she wanted, because there was no one to hear.

Those used tires were too used to be of any good. Scrap rubber, actually. No way could he land without a catastrophic wreck. She could already smell their burning.

Battlestar Galactica Rewatch Part 2: Old vs New

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(For Part 1 in this series on the Battlestar Galactica reboot, click here)

When I was a kid I hated Jimmy Carter for one reason: he got the Israelis and the Egyptians to sign a peace deal, and the televised signing of that peace deal interrupted the 1978 premiere of the original Battlestar Galactica. I still haven’t forgiven him for this.

The first incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, created by Glen A. Larsen, lasted just one season with 24 episodes. There was a short-lived resurrection called Battlestar 80 that expired after ten episodes. I forget a lot of the details of Battlestar 80 but reading the synopsis it sounds like the writers were heavily into whiskey and cocaine.

I won’t get into how the original compares to the reboot overall. I don’t think that’s a fair comparison for a couple of reasons. First, television technology—special effects specifically—has improved vastly over the quarter century between the two shows. Second, although they’re essentially the same stories with a bunch of the same characters, they’re from different writers who had different visions.

Also, I’m not going to go through a detailed list of the differences. But there are three differences I want to highlight.

The first, in the scheme of things, is relatively minor.

Seven-year-old me wanted to be the ace fighter pilot Starbuck. Played by Dirk Benedict, he was brash and wisecracking and cigar chomping and a good time. When news of the reboot came out, I learned that Starbuck was getting a sex change. He’d now be a woman, played by a woman (Katee Sackhoff). Seven-year-old me was not happy. Adult me considered it a cheap PC stunt. Nowadays sex-swapping characters is so commonplace it’s almost a cliché, if not a joke. But back then I can’t recall it happening all that much.

So, yes a stunt. Yes, odd. Yes, annoying. But…

…thanks to the writing and Sackhoff’s portrayal, it worked. Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck, was gritty and brash and complex and messy and fun, and while, in my opinion she could have remained a he (we didn’t really need that forced romance between her and Apollo), Sackhoff helped make the show what it was.

The second difference between the two series was a major change. In retrospect it seems like such an obvious idea I’m surprised it wasn’t in the original. In the original, the cylons were these hulking and bulky metallic toaster-looking robots.

The reboot had these steel cylons in spades, plus another type of cylon, a type that looked human, 12 models with many copies, to be exact, models with different personalities, and the reboot introduced yet another twist: some of these humanoid cylons didn’t even know they weren’t truly human.

This opened up a universe of tension. Who is a cylon and who isn’t? Who is a sleeper agent? Are cylons redeemable? Do they have a sense of self? A soul? All these questions are great plot fodder, and they’d be much harder to pull off with robots that look like toasters.

Another major change had to do with tone. Seventies sci-fi in general was fun and colorful, unintentionally campy even when trying to be serious. And the special effects were definitely underwhelming. The original fit this profile.

The reboot, in contrast, was darker. Literally. Early episodes employed the shaky camera technique that was trendy back in the zeroes (I hate it).

The tone was darker, too. It had a sheen of noir, which totally fit a series about the nearly total holocaust of the human race. No, you can’t necessarily call a show about robots massacring humans lighthearted, but compared to the original, the reboot went a thousand times darker. Torture of all kinds. Lots of violence. Lots of sex (censored). Humanoid cylons acting monstrous and humans acting monstrous.

It might all sound too heavy, but this is a heavy premise. Taking out the camp and throwing it away worked.

Next up, a look at the major themes of the Battlestar Galactica reboot.

Trope or Choke: Episode 10

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The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less following these guidelines:

Setting: Australia when it was a penal colony

Genre: True crime + middle grade

Trope: Up shit’s creek without a paddle

Characters: Conspiracy theorist + World’s most annoying superhero

POV: First/Future

The result:

One Last Cigarette

I’ll be on my way to the bodega for what I swear will be my last pack of cigarettes when I’ll hit a brick wall.

Literally.

All of a sudden in the middle of the sidewalk there’ll be this brick wall out of nowhere. What the actual fuck I’ll say to the guy next to me, this white-haired ponytailed dude with a potbelly and dandruff on his cardigan.

“This, my inquisitive friend, is evidence of the illuminati,” he’ll say as he runs his sausage fingers along the bricks.

“Aw, shucks,” a twerpy voice says. “Ain’t no illuminati. It was me.”

I’ll turn to see a kid, twelve max, in a silver cape.

“I am Turbo Boy. It was supposed to be a portal.”

“Listen, son,” the man will say. “I am Donovan Corduroy, foremost expert on conspiracies. “Perhaps you’ve read my wikipedia page.”

We’ll both shake our heads.

“No such things as superheroes. Only conspiracies not yet uncovered.”

“Listen mister, I’m a fourth-generation superhero,” the kid whines. “That’s what my mom said.”

“And where is this so-called mother?”

“Murdered. And I’m using my portal-making powers to catch her killer.”

“Shouldn’t you leave that to the police?”

“They’re useless.” He’ll lift up a blood-stained shirt. “This here’s the killer’s blood, and I intend on using it to create a portal to catch the son of a bitch.”

“Don’t swear,” Corduroy says.

“Piss poop fart butt dick ass!”

“How about you just unmanifest this wall? I need a Marlboro something bad.”

“Smoking’s bad for you mister.”

“I’ve never kidney-punched a superhero,” I’ll say.

Of course I wasn’t planning on punching a kid. But god I needed that nicotine. “Just pull a Gorbachev and tear down this wall.”

“No!” Corduroy will throw his body against it. “This is evidence. I must study it.”

Turbo boy smirks. “Step away from it, dork. I’ve got a murder to solve.”

The kid’ll shoot both arms out. The brick wall trembles like a mother rocking her baby, then like a drunk shaking a toddler.

And the wall will crumble like it’s Berlin 1989.

Then a blinding flash and a sound like an oncoming train. I’ll smell sulfur, which only makes me jones harder for a smoke.

Finally it’ll end.

And my feet’ll be soaked.

“What the heck.”

When I open my eyes it’s not night but light. Blue skies. Scrubby desert. And me ankle deep in a creek.

“What deception is this?” Corduroy will say. “Must be some kind of illuminati mind control. We’ve got to uncover their deception.”

Just then a man’ll ride up on a horse holding the longest rifle ever, aimed at me. “What’re you doing out here?”

“Are you the man who killed my mom?” Turbo Boy will say.

“No, but you,” he points to me, “fit the description of John Wesley Rotheram. The most wanted man in Australia. Escaped in the year of the lord 1804.”

“Time travel, you little bastard?” I’ll hiss. “And all I wanted was one last cigarette.”

Battlestar Galactica Rewatch Part 1: History of the Reboot

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Even when it first appeared in 2003, the reboot of the classic 1970s series Battlestar Galactica was considered an instant classic, and not just by me. Part of that success had to do with the megawatt casting of two Oscar nominees, Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell in the leads, and part had to do with the gritty writing and visual style that was all the rage in the early zeroes. Battlestar Galactica started off as a miniseries but quickly launched into a full-time series that lasted four seasons on Syfy, becoming one of that channel’s flagship shows.

I watched it faithfully when it first came out. At the time I loved it. I couldn’t get enough. I was obsessed by the original show as a kid (although it looks incredibly cheesy to me now). I wanted to be Dirk Benedict’s Starbuck! And I was definitely psyched by the prospect of a reboot.

Before I get too far I suppose I should tell you all what Battlestar Galactica (the reboot) was about. A human civilization called the Colonials creates robots called cylons, which rebel and launch a deadly war against them. Decades after a stalemate, human-looking cylons infiltrate colonial defenses, enabling the cylons to launch an overwhelming attack. Out of 20 billion humans, only about 40,000 survive aboard a handful of spacefaring vessels led by the battlestar Galactica. Chased by the cylons, they set out to find a legendary lost colony called Earth.

The miniseries came out as a standalone three-hour event in late 2003. It launched to strong acclaim, both critical (positive reviews, a Saturn Award, Emmy nominations) and audience (83% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes), and then came the series, which was also lauded.

The series was directed by Michael Rymer and written by Ronald M. Moore, who’d previously worked on various Star Treks as a writer and/or producer, and who went on to shows including Helix and Outlander.

All told, there were 76 episodes of Battlestar Galactica spread out over four seasons from 2004 to 2009, plus ancillary episodes, including a movie rehashing the entire series from the cylon’s point of view (The Plan), a webisode prequel featuring the young Commander Adama (Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome), and a prequel series, Caprica, that lasted for a single 19-episode season. Caprica was kind of a mess, but it was interesting, at least.

Its strong writing and acting and imaginative plot earned Battlestar Galactica a ton of awards and nominations, including Saturns, Hugos, Emmys, and even a Peabody. Critics mostly praised the show, although some criticized it for being heavy handed (true) and straying too far from the premise of the original series (true).

I don’t know if it can be said that Battlestar Galactica cemented the Syfy channel’s place in the early 21st century cable ecosystem, but it definitely helped. One thing I can say for sure is that Battlestar Galactica has left a towering legacy in the sci-fi universe. Its lofty position in sci-fi lore is cemented, for good reason.

With all this in mind, I decided to rewatch the entire series 20 years on to see how it all held up. At first I thought I could fit everything I wanted to say about it in maybe a few posts, but honestly who likes to read three thousand words on a blog post? So I’ll spread this over several posts and let you all know my verdict.

Watch This Movie: Pearl

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I got into a horror kick recently. Why do I love horror? The thrills, the inventiveness, the over-the-topness, the almost cartoonish quality that stylized, fake horror, when done right, can have. Pearl came up on my Amazon Prime feed. The promo image was a Wizard of Oz riff, a Dorothyesque girl climbing a Scarecrow mount. It honestly confused me.

I almost passed it by. So glad I didn’t.

Pearl falls into the category of what I call Sunlit Horror (I don’t know if that’s a real genre. Now it is). Like Midsommar, the bulk of the action and the terror takes place in the daytime on perfectly sunny days. Instead of Be Afraid of the Dark it’s just Be Afraid.

Here’s the basic plot: It’s 1918 rural Texas. Pearl is a farmgirl with a stern German immigrant mother, a disabled father and a husband off in Europe fighting WW1. Pearl hates her dreary life. She dreams of being a star in the new film industry.

Sounds like a fun movie, right?

Well, it is, but not the way that that summary implies. Add to the plot some crushed dreams, a hungry alligator, and we’re off in a wholly different direction.

There are so many great things about Pearl. First, the visuals. Pearl such a beautiful movie, filmed in bright colors like old Hollywood classics on acid. It plays with the Wizard of Oz allusions but twists them and even perverts them in one of the weirdest and best scenes in the movie. Just for the visuals alone, Pearl is worth your time.

Another great thing about Pearl is the entire cast. The director Ti West assembled a strong ensemble to play characters who are well written to fill the tropes we love and expect in horror films (yes, tropes can be a good thing). The standout for me was Pearl herself. I’d heard of Mia Goth but never seen her in movies, only knowing her as the girl with no eyebrows. Turns out she does have eyebrows, they’re just very blonde. She’s perfect in this role, pretty but not too pretty, striving and failing. Goth is great at showing her desires, frustration and ultimately her rage. There’s an audition scene that, if there was any justice in the world, would have won Goth an Oscar. And there’s a scene at the end, a closeup of Pearl’s face, where Goth manages to portray a range of emotions from rage to happiness to madness to pure ridiculousness.

So my bottom line is: Pearl is one of the best horror flicks I’ve seen in a long time. Watch it.

And then watch X. Also starring Mia Goth, X is the first movie in this trilogy, but it’s set in 1979 Texas as a porn crew ventures to a run-down Texas farmhouse to film a movie.

Guess who owns the farmhouse.