It's creepy when Pearl the pig sits upright on a hay bale like a human, but it's bone chilling when this pig convinces others to kill for him in the bizarre, macabre thriller Pearl.
In Chowder, a rural town in Michigan, a high school student announces over the intercom that a seventh-grader beheaded a pig at his grandfather's farm and swears another pig made him do it. Stoner students Mitch and Jerry hear the story and convince fellow student Susan to go with them to view the supposedly psychotic animal. What starts out as a joke quickly becomes a nightmare for the trio when they come face to face with Pearl the pig inside the farm's barn. Suddenly, Pearl is in their heads, manipulating their thoughts and making the other pigs attack them. Jerry tries a daring escape and the pigs swarm him, but a wounded Susan uses the distraction to break into the main farmhouse and call 911. The arriving cops laugh off Susan's crazy story of a mind-controlling pig until they also become victims to Pearl's powerful ability. More disturbing: Pearl has just discovered there's a bigger world beyond the farm and he can control the minds of humans from afar.
Josh Malerman (Bird Box; A House at the Bottom of a Lake) has mastered the technique of taking a normal scenario (boy visiting his grandfather's farm), adding an incredibly disturbing reality (mind-controlling farm animal) and letting the story spiral in a believable way. Pearl is a riveting novel of the bizarre that demands discussion. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer