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Something is not right with Pearl ( Mia Goth ), and she’ll never understand why. She’s too set in her ways, like her need to perform on haystacks while dancing with a pitchfork, or murdering animals when no one is watching. She wants to get out of her isolated farm in 1918 Texas, and experience the love that comes from performing, in being seen as an entertainer but not your truest self. It’s not likely her future star profiles would ever mention that she once impaled a duck with a pitchfork and then fed it to her best friend, an alligator (as we see when her name splashed across the screen in the opening credits).  

Ti West ’s “Pearl” is about how frightening actors can be as they feed that corrosive need to be seen at all costs. So it’s fitting that this movie’s most brilliant moment, its final shot (not a spoiler, as we know she makes it to 1979 in West's “ X ”), is from Goth using her face to disturbing ends. It’s a wide, forced smile; her teeth signal happiness, while her sporadically twitching facial muscles and welling tears say something much scarier, all while frozen in that desperation. West makes us stare at it during the closing credits. It’s all wildly, wonderfully discomforting, and one wishes this character study strove for that effect more often while telling a story that’s not as nuanced as its final, silent call for help.  

But for how obvious the plotting and dialogue can be from co-writers West and Goth in painting a portrait of a monster, it’s fun to interpret Pearl’s proclamations throughout her film as actor/serial killer double-speak: “The whole world is going to know my name,” “I don't like reality,” “All I want is to be loved.” Goth makes these revelations count in primal showcases, expressed with a breathy, heavily accented voice that’s meant to make her sound kind of naive and very much innocent, a carbon copy of the countless Pearls out there. A long-running close-up of Goth later on takes us on a wild ride of her anxieties about not being loved, her fears of her true self, unaware that the sudden turn within her is near, especially after someone makes her feel small. Then they suffer for it.  

Those who remember this year’s “X” will remember the farm where a handful of adult film folk died, and Goth’s elderly version of Pearl, who was often naked and rebuffed and took it all very personally for a course of events a la “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” The few kills in “Pearl” are more calculated, and come as climaxes to scenes of anger, rejection, and her own frustrations. West makes those moments count, creating dread out of a camera’s movement (slowly spinning at one point, waiting for Pearl to pop into frame), while his editing then has its own brutality. Usually taking place in daylight and within Pearl’s psychosis, they’re meant to be played as dark comedy. That very mix of tone doesn’t hit as poignantly as it wants to, but the kills are effectively bracing.  

The house is treated with similar shots as in “X,” but the cinematography by Eliot Rockett presents it in glowing Technicolor, a storybook world of potential—bright green grass, a blood-red farmhouse, blue sky overalls on Pearl as she dreams of getting away. Things are less luminous inside the home, where Pearl’s life of isolation and grave unhappiness is no anomaly: her father ( Matthew Sunderland ) is literally in a wheelchair, sick and wordless, and always needs tending to. And while “Pearl” is a monster movie, Goth’s character has a villain of her own, her mother Ruth, portrayed with haunting disgust this side of “ Mommie Dearest ” by an incredible Tandi Wright .  

Repression is evil’s trick in “X” and now “Pearl”; it makes connection, pleasure, and so much that is fruitful all the more out of reach. It gets people killed. Ruth helps make sense of the horror in this world, in a staggering centerpiece scene that lays it all out on a dinner table: she rips apart Pearl’s hopes of ever leaving, projects comments of failure onto her, and screams about her own immense dissatisfaction with life that she has accepted. Her words are visceral, and they seem to control the thunderstorms that boom from the outside. It's an apt turning point for Pearl, and an excellent display for both Goth and Wright.  

Pearl finds an escape from all of this in the movies—even just the thought of being in one. When her father needs more medicine, she goes to town and gets to actually watch one, inspiring her dreams of being the smiling dancing woman in the frame. She also meets a dashing projectionist ( David Corenswet ), who makes her feel like she could be a movie star, although she later finds out what kind of movies he means, and what he wants from her. Pearl remains as naive as she is needy as she tells him in wistful terms about wanting to be a star. It's here that we simply have to trust Goth and West’s dedication to this character and believe that they're rooting for her in the end.   

West's film takes place in a world that is sick, as the Spanish Flu has reached the states, causing people to wear masks and be isolated. That’s a stronger period element than the movie’s presentation; there’s a nagging effect that in spite of the production design—those cars, dresses, and even a full-out dance sequence—that the movie is so self-amused it’s practically baiting people who go to old movies in theaters to laugh at the niceties and mannerisms of earlier eras. It can be accomplished in other facets, like the gorgeous wall-to-wall score by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams that kicks off with a sumptuous main theme, but the aesthetic gambit of “Pearl” registers more as being cute than immersive.  

There are just too many moments in which the sincerity of “Pearl” is questionable. Yes, it gives Goth a compelling chance to nurture a fascinating character, to show a performer’s heart and needs, for us to clock her emotional reactions like the steps of a slasher. But the execution of “Pearl” is shakier in what it wants us to take from her delusions, her violent outbursts, her yearning for love. “Pearl” gets a little too close to letting you simply laugh at her. We know she wouldn’t like that.

Now playing in theaters. 

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Pearl (2022)

Rated R for some strong violence, gore, strong sexual content and graphic nudity.

102 minutes

Mia Goth as Pearl

David Corenswet as The Projectionist

Tandi Wright as Mother

Matthew Sunderland as Father

Emma Jenkins-Purro as Mitzy

Alistair Sewell as Howard

Writer (based on characters created by)

Cinematographer.

• Eliot Rockett
• Tyler Bates
• Tim Williams

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Pearl is a slasher prequel that makes the original even better

A killer follow-up to x creates a promising new horror franchise.

By Andrew Webster , an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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When X came out earlier this year, it was a capable, well-crafted homage to ’70s slasher flicks from director Ti West, but there wasn’t much to it beyond that. It turns out the project is much bigger than that one-off story. As was teased at the end of X , we now have a prequel, Pearl , that tells the origin story of its titular bloodthirsty killer. On their own, the two films each offer a satisfying amount of scares and gore. But it’s when you put them together that they become much more intriguing.

This review contains spoilers for both Pearl and X.

X told the story of a group of young folks attempting to film a porn movie in a rented farmhouse before being steadily killed by the murderous elderly couple they were renting from. Pearl explains how that couple got so murderous. Its predecessor pulled liberally from classic horror movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , but Pearl goes in a different direction. It’s much more like The Wizard of Oz. Only, you know, with lots of blood and guts.

Set in 1918, it stars Pearl (Mia Goth), a simple farm girl with dreams of being a star. Problem is, her husband (Alistair Sewell) is away fighting in World War I, her father (Matthew Sunderland) is sick with the Spanish flu, and her strict mother (Tandi Wright) needs Pearl’s help to keep their struggling farm going. Despite a seemingly cheery disposition, Pearl feels trapped. She sneaks out whenever she can to watch movies, dreaming of one day being a dancer on-screen. But it’s not long before the cracks start to show. Early on, she randomly kills a farm animal with a casual kind of blood lust, and later, she has a surprisingly intimate moment with a scarecrow. Something is wrong, and Pearl knows it. She just doesn’t know how to fix it.

Things really start to change when she meets the local projectionist (David Corenswet), a self-proclaimed Bohemian who introduces her to smut movies and the idea of living life for yourself. While her mother dismisses Pearl’s dreams, the projectionist actually supports them, fueling her desires. Soon after, her glamorous sister-in-law Misty (Emma Jenkins-Purro) convinces Pearl to audition for a local dance troupe. What follows is a series of unfortunate events that leads to Pearl ultimately becoming uncoupled from reality and taking her first steps into the wide world of being a slasher movie villain.

Pearl works as a standalone horror movie; the contrast between The Wizard of Oz vibe and the lurking dread builds a wonderful kind of tension and makes the moments of bloodshed hit that much harder. It helps that Goth turns in an incredible performance. She shines, particularly during a long, discomforting speech that sees her accept herself as well as the perfect yet painfully awkward credits sequence. Goth’s ability to swap between Pearl’s true self and the mask she wears in public is wonderful to watch.

But what really makes the movie interesting is how it builds on, and adds layers and texture to, its predecessor. X made it clear that Pearl was full of spite and envy, yearning for her younger days. But now, those motivations are much more clear, to the point that she almost becomes a sympathetic figure. We also see how her husband is roped into the whole endeavor and even get an origin story for the alligator. No matter which order you watch them in, each movie strengthens the other.

This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon, of course. Horror movies are often great at building up a mythology over the course of multiple films, whether it’s Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street . But with Pearl and X , much like with Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy , there’s an intentionality that’s clear from the beginning. The mythology isn’t being created on the fly; it’s there from the start, waiting for you to put the pieces together.

There’s more on the way, too: Pearl will be followed by Maxxxine , a direct sequel to X (I know, the titles are confusing) that sees Goth reprise her other role of Maxine as she attempts to make it in LA. Based on the first teaser , it’s clear Maxxxine will have an ’80s vibe, adding another flavor to West’s growing slasher story — and giving Goth another chance to establish herself as one of horror’s most promising new villains.

Pearl is in theaters on September 16th. This review is based on a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.

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‘Pearl’ Review: A Farmer’s Daughter Moves Up the Food Chain

A horror-movie killer gets a surprising origin story in Ti West’s prequel to “X.”

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By A.O. Scott

If you have seen “X,” Ti West’s ingenious and heartfelt pastiche of ’70s horror and hard-core pornography, you know that Mia Goth plays two roles. (If you haven’t seen it, there are spoilers ahead.) She is Maxine, an aspiring movie star and the designated survivor of a rural killing spree. Disguised by prosthetic makeup, she is also a horny and homicidal farmer’s wife named Pearl, and does a lot of killing.

In “Pearl,” which Goth wrote with West, she repeats that role, playing Pearl as a horny and homicidal farmer’s daughter. That’s not the setup for a dirty joke, and this prequel, set in 1918, is less of a dirty movie than “X” aspired to be. There is some sex and plenty of gore, but mostly an atmosphere of feverish, lurid melodrama leavened with winks of knowing humor and held together by Goth’s utterly earnest and wondrously bizarre performance.

More than 50 years before the events in “X,” Pearl lives on the same Texas farm, with its creaky yellow house, its cavernous barn, and a hungry alligator in the pond. Her life is an endless cycle of toil and frustration. Her husband, Howard, is away at war, leaving her alone with her parents: a pious, dictatorial German mother (Tandi Wright) and a father (Matthew Sunderland) who has been incapacitated by the flu. Money is scarce, and Pearl escapes by sneaking off to the movies while she’s running errands in town.

She dreams of running off to pursue a career in pictures, practicing song-and-dance routines in anticipation of a big break. She also practices what we know from “X” will be one of her later vocations. When a goose wanders into the barn and looks at her funny, she impales it on a pitchfork and feeds it to the alligator. The arc of “Pearl” charts her progress up the food chain, from poultry to human prey.

The bloodshed is at least as grisly as the slaughter in “X,” but “Pearl” occupies a different corner of the slasher-movie universe. It isn’t especially suspenseful — the identity of the killer is never in doubt, and her victims don’t elicit much sympathy — but it has a strange, hallucinatory intensity. The emotions and the colors are gaudy and overwrought, the music (by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams) is frenzied and portentous, but the film is too sincere, too tender toward its peculiar heroine, to count as camp.

It’s also a bit thin and undercooked, but Goth’s performance transcends its limits. She is by turns childlike, seductive and terrifying. Pearl falls into an affair with the local movie-house projectionist (David Corenswet), who introduces her to French pornography and dazzles her with the promise of a Bohemian life free of small-town constraints. She seethes and simpers around her parents, and tries to be friends with her wholesome blonde sister-in-law (Emma Jenkins-Purro). Through it all, Pearl grapples with stifling social and domestic expectations and with her irrepressible hunger for freedom, fame and erotic release.

Goth might remind you at times of Judy Garland in youth, of Shelley Duvall in the ’70s, or of a demonically possessed Raggedy Ann doll, but she has her own fearless and forthright intensity. West wants you to see that Pearl, a monster in the making, is also a heroine for the ages. Goth will make you believe it. Or else.

Pearl Rated R. Stay out of the barn, and the basement. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Pearl review: Mia Goth melts down as a serial killer in the making

A prequel to Ti West's X, Pearl unfolds in a lurid psychological zone that's even scarier.

Senior Editor, Movies

As played by a fresh-faced, subtly unhinged Mia Goth , Pearl performs the tasks that might fall to any farm girl living in 1918 with a husband away fighting the Great War. She tends to her aging parents, sneaking off to the silent movies when she can. She feeds the livestock, chatting with Mr. Deuce, a duck. She tongue-kisses a scarecrow. She casually impales the duck with a pitchfork (sorry, Mr. Deuce), feeding it to an alligator in the local pond. She fantasizes about her husband's body exploding on a mine.

Pearl, if you haven't guessed it, is special ("I'm special," she says to no one in particular), and here's where anyone hoping to avoid spoilers for this movie or Ti West's 1970s-set retro slasher X — to which Pearl is a prequel — will want to check out. In X , Goth pulled off a fun, uncredited double dip, performing as that film's Maxine, a lanky wannabe porn star, and also its decrepit Pearl, the elderly murderous owner of the property on which the crew shoots Maxine's debut, The Farmer's Daughters .

But though it shares a cinematic universe with X (and a similar Searchers -like opening shot), Pearl is the superior film, less beholden to West's occasionally hermetic sense of horror-movie homage , but vibrating with the gushy gestures of Sirk-by-way-of-John-Waters melodrama. The new film explodes with primary colors, sporting a scripted title card with the name of the movie in quotes; it also floats along on that rarest of things, a churning wall-to-wall orchestral score (the intentionally emotive work is by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams).

It's a register well suited to depicting a mind plunging into fury. The dialogue isn't overheated so much as charred: "Malevolence is festering within you," declares Pearl's severe German mother (Tandi Wright), their Carrie -ish dynamic boding well for fans of gory parent-daughter showdowns. Pearl is best viewed as its main character's movie-obsessed vision, everyone else in it mere supporting players to the swirl in her head. Meanwhile, a pig carcass gathers maggots on the front porch, a sight few visitors seem to process as the warning it is.

Co-scripting with her director, Goth is the standout, displaying a verbal vigor and earthiness she's been unable to tap so far (not even in movies like Nymphomaniac and A Cure for Wellness ). Her babyish cheeks and slightly spaced delivery have never been put to better ends, and Goth makes the most of a croaking, lengthy one-take monologue, during which a new horror monster is born. Pearl is the rare origin story where you see the breakdown happening in real time. Grade: A–

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• Director Ti West went over the rainbow to make 'demented, disturbing' horror prequel Pearl
• How X and Pearl star Mia Goth ended up playing three of 2022's greatest horror roles
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Pearl cements Mia Goth’s place as a true horror icon

The middle film in Ti West’s moviemaking horror trilogy is a colorful blast with one central problem

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Polygon has a team on the ground at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, reporting on the horror, comedy, drama, and action movies meant to dominate the cinematic conversation as we head into awards season. This review was published in conjunction with the film’s TIFF premiere.

When horror writer-director Ti West premiered his gory period slasher X at SXSW in March 2022, it came with a surprise reveal: an end-credits trailer for a prequel, Pearl , which would fill in the backstory of X ’s ruthless main villain. For Pearl ’s North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, West pulled a similar trick, with a teaser and announcement for a third film, MaXXXine , as a sequel to X . Where X is an ode to 1970s-style raw, grainy independent horror movies, West says MaXXXine will be inspired by the ’80s VHS boom — which the tracking lines, color glitches, and synth score on the MaXXXine teaser certainly underline.

That leaves Pearl as the middle movie in a trilogy (so far, at least), and also as the series’ biggest outlier. With stronger visuals than X , a phenomenal and ambitious performance from Mia Goth, but also an emptier and more meandering plot, Pearl loses the fun parts of Ti West’s pastiche. At the same time, it still delivers plenty of thrills and killer moments. It’s both a vividly painted nightmare and a showcase for its star.

X is firmly set during the independent filmmaking boom of the 1970s, as an homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , as seen through the eyes of the porn industry. Mia Goth is stellar, pulling double duty as both final girl Maxine and as Pearl, the killer who comes after her. X has plenty of laughs, gory kills, inventive editing, and even some poignant commentary on show business and moviemaking ambitions.

Pearl turns back the clock to tell Pearl’s story starting in 1918, when she’s a bright-eyed young woman (still played by Mia Goth) with big dreams of making it in the movies. The problem is that she’s stuck in a world too small for her. Her husband, Howard, is away in Europe, fighting the war to end all wars. In the meantime, Pearl is living at her parents’ farm under the thumb of her repressive German immigrant mother (Tandi Wright) and is forced to take care of her wheelchair-bound father (Matthew Sunderland) during the height of the Spanish flu pandemic, where people out on the streets wear masks over their mouths and noses, avoid close contact or indoor spaces, and constantly talk about the pandemic. A cacophony of coughing can be heard anywhere Pearl goes. What a coincidence!

Pearl hates her limited life under her mother’s eyes and judgment, and the only escapism she finds is at the movies. She dreams of being a dancer on the big screen, in front of big, adoring crowds. In the meantime, she dances to her animals, who she names after her favorite movie stars. She also occasionally kills one of them to feed the alligator that lives in the nearby pond. When she meets the self-serving projectionist (David Corenswet) at her local movie house, he sells her on big dreams of going to Europe and working as a dancer. He also grooms her, showing her a stag movie — the kind that paved the way for the indie porno shoot in X . Suddenly, Pearl sees a way out, and she’s willing to do anything to achieve it.

The primary reason to see Pearl is Mia Goth’s mesmerizing, tour-de-force performance. She infuses the role with enough innocence and wishfulness to make viewers root for her, even if they already know about her future crimes and are appalled by her choices in the present. While the look of the film may be inspired by Technicolor wonders like The Wizard of Oz , Goth’s performance is straight out of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho , kind and charming one minute, terrifying and deranged the next.

Where X was heavily inspired by the cheap, DIY aesthetic of early indie slashers, Pearl is aimed at replicating colorful visions in the vein of Mary Poppins . Cinematographer Eliot Rockett imbues the film with bright, vivid colors, a soft palette, and a dreamlike quality, while Tyler Bates and Tim Williams’ score gives the film a rousing symphonic sound that makes Pearl’s journey feel as grand as Maria’s in The Sound of Music . Pearl is pure pastiche in style, but it works wonderfully, and it resonates as something that expresses West’s reverence, rather than as a parody or simple imitation.

The problem is that the pastiche doesn’t feel as purposeful as it did in X . The very specific 1918 setting doesn’t seem to be there for any other reason than to include a COVID allegory. It isn’t about specific movie references, which don’t reflect the moviemaking of the 1910s, and it doesn’t comment on conservatism or censorship in film, as the setting comes decades before the Hays Code turned Hollywood into a prisoner of moral conservatism.

The script, co-written by West and Goth, doesn’t do much to deepen Pearl’s character — and why would it? She’s the thinnest excuse for a character in X , an ageist villain who murders young, attractive, sexually active people out of petty jealousy and spite, mostly to get across a wry sense of irony over the idea that old people still want to feel loved and desired. With Pearl , West and Goth had an opportunity to explore the environment that created Pearl’s sexual and killer drive, but they mostly leave it to viewers’ imaginations. Like X before it, Pearl presents its central character as little more than a stock slasher-movie psycho with selfish ambitions, no moral compass, and an appetite for blood.

Pearl is a showcase for Mia Goth as a horror star: The climax centers on a monologue where West holds the camera on her face for more than five minutes as she reveals what drives her. West paints a pretty picture in the film, building up gorgeous Technicolor nightmares, aided by painted backgrounds and bright colors. But the pieces don’t add up into anything more than a shiny surface. Pearl goes to show that just because you can shoot a movie in secret doesn’t mean you have to.

Pearl debuts in theaters on Sept. 16.

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‘pearl’ review: ti west and mia goth’s ‘x’ prequel delivers more technicolor camp than horror.

The indie exploitation veteran and his starry-eyed leading lady trace the murderous mayhem of broken dreams on a Texas farm in the lush style of a midcentury melodrama in A24’s Venice premiere.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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It’s as if Todd Haynes rethought Far From Heaven , making Julianne Moore respond to having a closeted gay husband and a taboo interracial romance by getting really pissed with a pitchfork and an axe.

After pulling double duty in X as aspiring porn queen Maxine and Pearl, the wizened farmer’s wife still yearning to see herself as an object of desire on the silver screen in her mind, Mia Goth returns to the title character here in 1918, a time when her innocence is just beginning to curdle. Her performance has a doe-eyed Shelley Duvall quality, both excited and frightened by the urges overcoming her.

Pearl is pining for her husband Howard (Alistair Sewell), off fighting in the war as the deadly Spanish influenza epidemic rips through the world. She lives in the farmhouse under the repressive rule of her strictly religious German immigrant mother Ruth (Tandi Wright), helping to care for her infirm father (Mathew Sunderland), rendered mute and immobile by his condition. But the depressing state of her life doesn’t stop Pearl from twirling around her bedroom, dreaming of becoming a dancer in pictures.

“I’m special,” she says, mirroring Maxine’s certainty in the earlier film that she had the “X factor.” “One day the whole world’s gonna know my name.” That belief in herself is mocked by the embittered Ruth, who predicts that she’s doomed to fail. She also observes her daughter’s weird traits, perhaps noticing when farm animals disappear to be fed by Pearl to the alligator that lives in the lake.

Dipping into her father’s morphine sulphate to ease her frustrations, Pearl escapes when she can to the local movie house, where the handsome projectionist ( David Corenswet ) takes an interest in her, encouraging her showbiz ambitions. At first, she remains faithful to her absent husband, working out her horniness on a cornfield scarecrow. But when the projectionist shows Pearl a racy European “art” film (a hilariously risqué B&W pre-talkie), sex between them is already in the air. She confides in him about being trapped with her parents: “If only they would just die.”

Ruth, meanwhile, doubles down on the restrictions when she perceives the darkness inside her daughter. “Malevolence is festering inside you,” she tells Pearl. “I can see it, and I will not let you leave this farm again.” That’s bad news for everyone, including Pearl’s perky sister-in-law (Emma Jenkins-Purro), who sneaks off to the dance audition with her.

Goth is terrific at revealing the threads barely holding Pearl together as they steadily unravel and her sanity starts slipping, making her more fearful of her own disturbing capabilities. “There’s something missing in me that the rest of the world has,” she mutters in a tremulous voice, while plotting her escape from the farm, her elaborate fantasies and reality increasingly indistinguishable.

West and Goth don’t shy away from the arch campiness of the scenario, but it’s chilling nonetheless when Pearl starts wreaking carnage and her poor dad can only watch in terrified silence. And it’s a testament to the collision of sweet and sinister in Goth’s performance that we feel her heartbreak when the audition goes south, pushing her over the edge.

It’s difficult to know what hardcore horror fans will make of this, given that it’s mostly a riff on traditional “women’s picture” tropes with a light seasoning of grisly slasher action, rather than the reverse. But as a cleverly packaged pandemic production with narrative echoes of that global anxiety, it’s at the very least something fresh. A gruesome portrait of another young woman hungering for a life greater than the fate she’s been handed, it makes an amusing companion piece to X.

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‘Pearl’ Review: Ti West and Mia Goth’s Unholy Prequel Doesn’t Kill

Kate erbland, editorial director.

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Well, it was certainly an  economical  choice. When Ti West made his return to horror filmmaking with this spring’s “X” — a gritty, grimy porn slasher that leaned hard on its ’70s vibe — the director behind such indie horror gems as “The House of the Devil” and “The Innkeepers” didn’t skimp on the blood and guts, offering up too much to (literally!) fill out just one film. While “X” boasted an eclectic and exciting cast, featuring everyone from Jenna Ortega and Brittany Snow to Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi and Martin Henderson, eagle-eyed audience members clued in early to its real casting trick: Mia Goth in a delightfully dark pair of different roles, including a particularly murderous one that buried her under gobs of old-age makeup.

Two for the price of one? Talk about indie ingenuity. But West went even further, not just casting a remarkable Goth in two roles, but two entire  films.  Unfortunately, one is far better than the other, and as West and Goth attempt to reverse-engineer a psycho killer’s bloody backstory, they diminish both “X” and “ Pearl ” in the process.

Soon after the film’s SXSW premiere , West and Goth revealed that, while making “X” in New Zealand during the early days of COVID-19 quarantine, they had  also  made a prequel to “X” that focused on the origin story of Goth’s older character, Pearl. If “X” is West’s love letter to ’70s-era exploitation films and indie porn, “Pearl” is an unholy ode to Technicolor fairy tales and the corrosive power of Hollywood, even in its earliest incarnation. Set in 1918 — toward the end of World War I and smack in the middle of the Spanish flu epidemic that infected one-third of the global population — “Pearl” attempts to fill in the blanks of Pearl’s backstory, a compelling enough idea that’s soon at the mercy of a rickety screenplay that’s both beholden to “X” and determined to be its own thing.

We open on an idyllic Texas farm, Technicolor bright, blazing with color and promise. It’s a far cry from the foreboding locale of “X,” a dusty wasteland in which nothing but resentment seemed to grow. Pearl, last seen (spoilers for “X” ahead, though no one should be reading up on “Pearl” without having seen its predecessor) splayed out and broken and smashed wide open outside her house of horrors, care of final girl Maxine (also, of course, Goth), is back to being young and fresh, full of hope in a world that we already know won’t answer any of her dreams.

Before young Pearl can finish swanning about her bedroom in a lovely gown, the lights come crashing down (literally and metaphorically), and we’re suddenly thrust into the reality of her being: she’s stuck on a hardscrabble farm, her husband is serving his country somewhere hellish, and her only company is her stern German mother (Tandi Wright) and an infirm father (Matthew Sunderland). As we learned in “X,” young Pearl dreamed of stardom — a major movie buff, she was convinced she was destined for the limelight, determined to somehow break into Hollywood by way of her dancing, which we’re never entirely sure is very good or not — but “Pearl” makes plain just how out of reach that dream really is.

But what was in reach for the wild-eyed farm girl? Less explored than her out-there dreams of stardom (but far more interesting) is Pearl’s growing awareness that she might be losing her grip on reality, or at least that she’s not experiencing reality the way others do. Indeed, she is different, but not the kicky, fun kind of different. Unease blooms in the film’s first act, though much of it is due to West leaning too hard on winks and nods to “X,” lingering over places and spaces (the driveway, the front steps, the basement) that served as killing fields in the first film and lustily eyeing up weapons (the film’s wood axe practically deserves top billing) that will, decades later, kill off so many of the stars of “X.”

But what about the stars and story of “Pearl”? If the film’s first act is beholden to reminding its audience what they loved about “X,” its final act zooms too far out to remind anyone why they loved the first film and why they might love this second one. West has indicated that he is already hard at work on a third entry in the series, one that would be inspired by a different filmmaking era and likely sew up the many loose ends left dangling from “Pearl,” and he’s got his work cut out for him. It’s a classic prequel problem, as West attempts to balance the old stuff with the new, and comes up short on both ends.

At least there is the film’s second act, which marries the dueling spirits of the rest of the feature, finding something giddily dark and dirty in the process. Pearl loves nothing more than going to the pictures, and when a handsome projectionist (David Corenswet) catches her eye and invites her back to the movie house whenever she wishes, it sets into motion many events and emotions that will forever change her. We learn little about The Projectionist — hell, not even his name, he’s simply listed by his profession in the film’s credits — beyond his affection for dirty movies and the pride he feels in being a so-called “bohemian.” He’ll make an excellent mark.

Not that Pearl even knows that’s what she’s looking for, as Goth guides her through the paces of fully cracking up with crackling ease. Goth commits fully to Pearl — both in “X” and this new prequel (the actress also has a screenwriting credit on “Pearl,” her first) — and if anything keeps this shaky prequel even remotely on track, it’s the full force of Goth’s dedication to the part.

But while she is doubtless an extraordinary performer, her talent often goes unchecked in the film. For every scene of her flipping out and burning through the screen, there’s a fussy, over the top corollary that follows on its heels. Nothing is as impressive as Pearl’s heart-stopping reaction to a pivotal dance audition, a raw and unfiltered sequence of truly bonkers proportions, but soon enough, West and Goth get bogged down in a laborious one-take sequence that mostly amounts to “Goth goes nuts, and then goes nuts again and again and again.”

It’s an impressive feat of filmmaking, but one that reveals nothing new, a major misstep for a film seemingly dedicated to doing just that. What’s the point of a prequel? We already know everything we need to about Pearl, but somehow, it feels less satisfying than we last left her, broken and bloody and crushed, but at least wholly original.

“Pearl” premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. A24 will release the film in theaters on Friday, September 16.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Lots of blood and gore in darkly feminist horror prequel.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Addresses the extremely limited options women had

No positive role models. The main character turns

This is a woman-led story: The three strongest cha

Extreme blood and gore. Imaginary image of soldier

Vintage "stag" film shown for nearly a minute depi

A use of "stupid."

Cigarette smoking. Main character drinks from bott

Parents need to know that Pearl is the horror prequel to Ti West's X (2022). It's set decades earlier, in 1918, and tells the story of how the creepy elderly woman in the first movie became a homicidal maniac (Mia Goth plays the character at both ages). It's extremely bloody and gory but well made…

Positive Messages

Addresses the extremely limited options women had in the early 1900s, and throughout most of human history. Women with dreams may be forced to give them up to live a very narrow, preordained lifestyle not of their choosing. The movie rages against this system in a violent way.

Positive Role Models

No positive role models. The main character turns from victim to monster.

Diverse Representations

This is a woman-led story: The three strongest characters are women and, while not especially admirable, are the ones who drive the story. Very few characters; all are White.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Extreme blood and gore. Imaginary image of soldier exploding, with blood and gore spattering everywhere. Woman's dress catches on fire; she's severely burned. Character killed, stabbed in head with pitchfork; lots of blood. Another hacked up with an axe; lots of blood, body parts shown. Someone is smothered with a pillowcase. Dead bodies. Characters slap one another. Stabbing a goose with a pitchfork; dead, bloody goose shown. Gory war footage in movie theater newsreel. Rotting pig covered in maggots. Jump scares. Nightmare sequence. Characters eaten by alligator. Threatening with knife. Main character smashes an alligator egg. References to WWI and the Spanish flu. Character considers feeding father to alligator. Spoken reference to a dead infant. Spoken references to killing animals. Violent sobbing, utter despair.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Vintage "stag" film shown for nearly a minute depicts a man with two sexual partners; there's full nudity, sex, thrusting, etc. Married main character kisses another man and wakes up in bed with him (sex implied). Main character pretends to "make out" with scarecrow, tongue-kissing; she sits on top of him and brings herself to orgasm. Main character bathes in front of her non-responsive father (nothing graphic shown).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Cigarette smoking. Main character drinks from bottle of morphine (medicine meant for her father).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Pearl is the horror prequel to Ti West 's X (2022). It's set decades earlier, in 1918, and tells the story of how the creepy elderly woman in the first movie became a homicidal maniac ( Mia Goth plays the character at both ages). It's extremely bloody and gory but well made and smart; it's really a dark feminist tale. Characters are brutally killed with axes and pitchforks, and body parts are severed. People are also severely burned, suffocated, eaten by an alligator, even blown up (flinging gory bits everywhere). There are jump scares and nightmares and a rotting pig covered in maggots. Several seconds of a vintage "stag" film are shown, with full nudity, thrusting, and sex. The married main character kisses another man and wakes up in his bed, with sex implied. She also kisses a scarecrow (using her tongue), then writhes on top of him, bringing herself to orgasm. There's cigarette smoking, and the main character takes a swig of morphine. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 6 parent reviews

Keep this from your kids at all costs. The violence in particular is sadistic and explicit.

What's the story.

In PEARL, it's 1918 -- many decades before the events of X -- and young Pearl ( Mia Goth ) lives on a farm with her strict, stern mother ( Tandi Wright ) and her ailing father (Matthew Sunderland). Pearl is married to soldier Howard (Alistair Sewell) and is waiting for him to return from war. While she waits, Pearl dreams of being a dancer and seeing the world and being adored, but she feels stifled by her mother and her never-ending farm chores. During her rare trips to town, Pearl steals trips to the picture show to watch dance films. She meets the handsome, carefree projectionist ( David Corenswet ), who stirs something inside her. Then she learns from her sister-in-law, Mitzy (Emma Jenkins-Purro), about a dance contest at the local church; the winner gets to go on a tour. Pearl pins her every hope on winning the contest. If she doesn't, who knows what might happen?

Is It Any Good?

This prequel to X promises an origin story, and while it may leave off with more questions than answers, it's still a well-crafted gorefest and a vivid character study. Indeed, Ti West 's Pearl , which was co-written by its star, only suffers when taken together in context with its predecessor. Since the older Pearl appears in the 1979-set X , we know that, no matter what happens in this movie, she'll survive. But as the prequel ends, it doesn't really suggest how the 60 years in between the movies might be filled. Although perhaps that's the point -- it might be a stifling, decades-long blur of nothing. But judged on its own merits, this is a very good movie, hinging on a powerful and sympathetic performance by Goth. West sets up many highly atmospheric shots and striking images, including a vicious rainstorm, a flirtation with a scarecrow, a red dress, a dance number, a gothic dinner table tableau, and a shocker of a tracking shot.

An antique adults-only film and "X" images and references link Pearl to Goth's doppelganger Maxine from the first movie. There are also references to the Spanish flu pandemic of the time and to people having to wear masks. But the real key to Pearl is Goth's modulated performance, which effectively shows the character's wants and needs and the emotional cracks that form like fault lines when things twist or go awry. The movie's tour-de-force is a lengthy monologue -- with Goth emoting in long, unbroken takes -- unloading her innermost thoughts and feelings to Mitzy. The words tumble out like boulders in an avalanche. Her transformation into a psychotic killer is no accident, and it doesn't happen overnight. It's the product of her environment, as well as her gender and the time period. To some, those might have been the "good old days," but to women like Pearl, they were a trap.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Pearl 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How is sex depicted? What values are imparted?

Is the movie scary or just gory? What's the difference? What's the appeal of horror movies ?

What does the movie have to say about the roles of women in history? What options did a woman have in 1918? How have things changed? How have they remained the same?

How does the movie compare to its predecessor? How do the two movies complement each other?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 15, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : November 29, 2022
• Cast : Mia Goth , Tandi Wright , David Corenswet
• Director : Ti West
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors, Female writers, Latino writers
• Studio : A24
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 102 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some strong violence, gore, strong sexual content and graphic nudity
• Last updated : December 25, 2023

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With Pearl , A24 perfects its first horror franchise

Pearl gets everything right where X gets so much wrong.

Horror sequels are nothing out of the ordinary. If a new movie manages to scare up a profit at the box office, you can pretty much assume a sequel is already in the works. Prequels , however, are another story. Even before George Lucas poisoned the well, it was generally agreed that trying to tell a new story set before the original was more trouble than its worth.

So it may come as a surprise that Pearl , the surprise prequel to Ti West’s surprise horror hit X , not only matches but exceeds the original. Filmed back-to-back with X before that movie earned $14 million on a budget of $1M, Pearl proves that A24’s first horror franchise is Mia Goth, who pulls double duty once again in a movie that manages to out-perform the original in nearly every way.

In X , Goth played both the final girl (aspiring porn star Maxine Minx) and the resentfully decrepit killer Pearl. In Pearl , Goth returns as the killer in her youth, but her second role as co-screenwriter proves even more important. Perhaps Goth’s touch is the secret sauce X sorely needed.

Pearl gets everything right where X gets so much wrong. Where the latter clumsily connects porn’s golden age to the 1970s independent film movement, the former states its own thesis clearly: movies are a wonderful escape from dreary reality, but they aren’t an excuse to disassociate from it. But fair is fair. Combined, both films make an argument for Goth as one of 2022’s most vital actors, or if not that then certainly the gutsiest. Placed side-by-side, though, there’s no contest. Pearl is a gem.

It’s 1918 and Pearl is in her 20s (or possibly her late teens). She lives on the farm where the events of X take place with her flinty German mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) and invalid father (Matthew Sunderland). Pearl goes about her daily chores with a blithe spirit. Farm life, she declares repeatedly, isn’t for her. She’s a movie star. She just needs a big shot working in the pictures to discover her. The callous joke West tells about Pearl in these films is that she isn’t a star at all, just a delusional naif with dreams outsized to her talent.

Plot plays little part in Pearl : The film revolves around Pearl’s confrontations with Ruth, chitchats with her sister-in-law Mitzi (Emma Jenkins-Purro), uncomfortable bathtimes with her dad, and occasional unauthorized jaunts to the town theater, run by a fine as wine fella referred to only as “the projectionist” (David Corenswet). As Pearl waits for her husband Howard’s return home from Europe, her patience with her parents, Mitzy, and even the projectionist grows deliriously thin. All her pent-up frustration and ego has to vent at some point. Pearl asks us to guess when, and on whom.

Pearl trades X ’s sympathy for empathy.

Instead of a propulsive thriller, Pearl functions as a character study with psycho underpinnings. West cedes the stage exclusively to Goth instead of asking her to share it with his ensemble as she does in X . Of all the smart choices Pearl makes, centering the narrative on Goth is the smartest. She exudes greater presence here playing just the one character than she does playing two in X , which says much given that she’s still the best thing about it.

But with only Pearl to consider (and with the spotlight trained on her) Goth digs into the character with what reads as zeal upfront but on closer inspection looks an awful lot like affection. Goth slowly slices Pearl open over the movie’s course, leading up to a third-act monologue clocking in at several minutes’ worth of confessional vulnerability. It’s the punctuation mark to the questions Pearl asks about what drives her and (more importantly) what in the hell is wrong with her.

Pearl cuts a sympathetic figure in X , where she’s characterized as the product of life’s disappointments. She washes her failure’s bitter taste from her mouth by slaying the young and the beautiful at their sexual peak. Pearl trades X ’s sympathy for empathy. West and Goth keep intact the suggestion that fate dealt Pearl a bum hand, but the film paints a clear picture of what being American meant in the 1910s. Yes, Pearl had it hard, but so did everyone else. Her disappointments and hardships aren’t unique. Neither are her hopes and dreams. What sets Pearl apart from everyone else is that she won’t take “no” for an answer.

Pearl and X are both on-theme for director Ti West, but Pearl benefits immensely from streamlining.

Goth acts as much through expression as expectoration. She flashes million-watt smiles, gambols about sets like a carefree otter, oozes a humble charm that belies Pearl’s hunger for fame and murderous rage, and treats phlegm, drool, and tears as props. Any actor willing to push themselves so far on camera that they start dripping snot tendrils is one worth paying attention to. Goth puts her soul, plus a whole box of Kleenex, into fully realizing Pearl from pastoral ingenue to axe-swinging maniac. No other performance on screen this year comes close to hers in terms of self-assured abandon.

Pearl ’s credits linger on the image of her desperate, maniacal, fourth-wall-breaking grin, which she holds for the camera for so long one hopes she only needed a single take to nail it. Goth is so invested in Pearl’s well-roundedness, though, that if getting the take right meant straining her jaw, she probably would have, and her commitment echoes throughout the rest of the film’s production.

West grounds Pearl with that thought in mind. This is an artist with his eyes trained on the past. Movies like The Roost , The House of the Devil , and The Innkeepers each draw on specific horror niches (haunted house films, Satanic worship and supernatural films, and monster movies) as well as 1970s and 1980s aesthetics.

Pearl and X are both on-theme for West, then, but Pearl benefits immensely from streamlining. In X , West’s kitchen sink tendencies get the better of him. Instead of having an idea, he has all of them, which stirs up a discordance of theme, style, atmosphere, and character that sets the movie off-kilter. But Pearl lands right in the 1930s and stays there through the use of Technicolor visuals, wipe transitions, and iris shots. West’s facility with these techniques dovetails with Goth’s work for a shocking, foundational effect: the oldfangled sensibility evoked through Pearl ’s design adds oomph to its every act of violence, be it small (pitchforking a duck) or great (pitchforking a person). Strictly speaking, X is gorier. In Pearl gore is used sparingly, but it hits harder against West’s backdrop — and so does Goth’s gradual ascent to madness.

Pearl debuts in theaters on Friday, September 16.

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Pearl review: Mia Goth in a horror prequel that marks the birth of a new horror icon

Filmmaker ti west’s follow-up to ‘x’ is a masterclass in finding sympathy for the devil, article bookmarked.

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Ti West’s X , released last year, was a Seventies-set slasher about pornographers working on the sly in a remote Texan farmhouse. It was a pleasingly nasty work, if limited by its questionable reliance on treating the ageing body as a source of repulsion. Pearl is its (far superior) prequel, a film written in two weeks by director Ti West and his star Mia Goth , shot in total secrecy and scrawled in bloodied guts and impotent rage. It is a wholly different beast – a tragicomic portrait of a woman so unable to process the falsity of her daydreams that it drives her to murder and mayhem.

In X , Goth played a wannabe pornstar named Maxine and, under layers of prosthetics, an elderly woman named Pearl who craved and resented Maxine’s youth. This film, set in 1918, sees the young Pearl living on the same farmstead featured in X . She is the daughter of immigrant parents, who shield themselves away out of fear of the burgeoning influenza pandemic and the risks they face due to their German heritage. Pearl’s husband, Howard (Alistair Sewell), has been sent to the Western Front. Pearl’s father (Matthew Sunderland), it’s suggested, succumbed to the flu and was left paralysed. Her cruel mother (Tandi Wright) resents her new role as caregiver, and grows especially abusive when it comes to Pearl’s reveries.

The film’s feverishly sunny, three-strip Technicolor look pays homage to The Wizard of Oz (1939) – as does Pearl’s unusual courtship of a scarecrow and Tyler Bates and Tim Williams’s winningly romantic score. But these things almost seem to taunt Pearl. They suggest that Dorothy Gale was her fullest and most enlightened self among the silly fictions of Oz, and not the daily toils of Kansas.

Pearl’s trips into town, in order to fetch morphine for her father, lead her into the arms of the local cinema’s handsome projectionist (David Corenswet). She shares with him her dreams of becoming a famous dancer. Then she confesses that, “sometimes I worry I’m not the same as other people”. Pearl is not OK. Driven deep into hiding is the darkness that’s in her. The film’s kills – fewer and less baroque than X – each become sharp and taut expulsions of feeling. West’s camera looks up in awe as Pearl looms over the frame, her axe raised.

Pearl’s torment – empathetic, frightening, and ludicrous all at the same time – is believable largely because Goth single-handedly wills it to be. Her commitment to every choked cry for attention, to every glassy-eyed departure from reality, is unimpeachable. What’s even more impressive is how delicately the actor unpicks Pearl’s innocence, to show us a woman so open to the world and vulnerable to its cruelties that she’s become corrupted beyond hope. “I feel things very deeply,” she observes. At the theatre, Pearl watches as macabre newsreel footage cuts to lines of dolled-up chorus girls – you get the sense she’s lost the ability to tell the difference between the two, between the pure and the abject.

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That confusion reaches its apex in a final reel monologue, shot largely in a single take, in which all the shlockiness of Pearl’s descent into madness collapses into pure sorrow – a real rip-your-heart-out-and-slam-it-on-the-table moment for Goth. West’s film is, in short, a masterclass in finding sympathy for the devil. The credits close on Pearl as its hero grins manically, staring unblinkingly into the camera for several, unbroken minutes. It’s an impressive feat. But what we’re really looking at is the ascent, fully unmasked, of a brand new horror icon.

Dir: Ti West. Starring: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro, Alistair Sewell. 15, 102 minutes.

‘Pearl’ is in cinemas from 17 March

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Pearl review: a star is born (and is very, very bloody)

Pearl is a candy-coated piece of rotten fruit. The film, which is director Ti West’s prequel to this year’s X , trades in the desaturated look and 1970s seediness of its parent film for a lurid, Douglas Sirk-inspired aesthetic that seems, at first, to exist incongruently with its story of intense violence and horror. But much like its titular protagonist, whose youthful beauty and Southern lilt masks the monster within, there’s a poison lurking beneath Pearl ’s vibrant colors and seemingly untarnished Depression-era America setting.

Set around 60 years before X , West’s new prequel does away with the por nstars, abandoned farms, and eerie old folks that made its predecessor’s horror influences clear and replaces them with poor farmers, charming film projectionists, and young women with big dreams. Despite those differences, Pearl still feels like a natural follow-up to X . The latter film, with its use of split screens and well-placed needle drops, offered a surprisingly dark rumination on the horror of old age. Pearl , meanwhile, explores the loss of innocence and, in specific, the often terrifying truths that remain after one’s dreams have been unceremoniously ripped away from them.

At the center of both films is the lonely, impulsive serial killer that Mia Goth has now played at both the start and end of her life. In X , Goth’s dueling performances as Pearl and Maxine shione amid an array of memorable supporting turns from the film’s other stars. Pearl , conversely, puts Goth at the front and center of its story. In doing so, the film offers its star the chance to give one of the best and most vulnerable performances of the year so far.

Pearl begins in 1918, a year when many American men are still fighting the war overseas while those who are stateside have been left to grapple with the horror of the Spanish Flu. It’s a time that is capable of making anyone go a little mad, which is why it’s the worst — or perfect, depending on how you view it — environment for a young Pearl (Goth) to grow up in. When the film begins, Pearl is still living under the same suffocating roof as her domineering mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright), who makes her routinely bathe and feed her crippled father (Matthew Sunderland), all while Pearl is left to pray nightly for her husband, Howard (Alistair Sewell), to return home safely from the war.

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Her poor relationship with her mother, combined with her own crushing loneliness, has made Pearl want nothing more than to get far, far away from her family’s farm. While she’s been able to stave off the suffocating mood of her life by routinely escaping into her own fantasies, a sudden act of cheerful, nonchalant violence in the film’s opening minutes makes it clear that Goth’s future serial killer is already on the brink of total collapse by the time Pearl catches up with her. As a result, the film’s script, which West and Goth co-wrote together, doesn’t take on the same slasher movie structure as X .

Instead, Pearl frequently feels like a kind of twisted coming-of-age story. In fact, like all the great heroes in all the great coming-of-age stories, the journey Pearl goes on throughout the film is one of self-acceptance. Over the course of  Pearl ‘s 102-minute runtime, she’s forced to let her defenses down and learn how to be vulnerable in front of others. The only problem is that the real Pearl, the one she hides beneath a smile that feels alternately mischievous and menacing, has a habit of scaring those around her — and for good reason.

Pearl’s descent into full-blown madness is juxtaposed quite effectively against the film’s bright Technicolor look. The resulting effect is one that makes Pearl seem, at times, like a horror film directed by French filmmaker Jacques Demy. The film’s sets are covered in bright pastel colors (an alleyway drainpipe is noticeably painted pink in one memorable scene) in a way that even calls to mind a film like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , which still looks as if it had been designed to look as sweet and delectable as possible. That said, the film that Pearl  has the most in common with is not The Young Girls of Rochefort or X , but Blue Velvet .

Like that 1986 David Lynch-directed classic, Pearl is interested in exploring the rot that lies beneath the surface of so many American archetypes. Pearl’s desperate desire to escape her hometown notably,places her in the same emotional space as practically every cinematic high schooler or Disney princess. But unlike so many of cinema’s other wanderlust-driven young protagonists, Pearl does not shine the longer she is left out in the sun. Instead, she sours, and so do her dreams, which start out innocently enough before growing increasingly violent and disturbing. The film, in turn, gradually replaces its pristinely painted red barns, golden scarecrows, and other pieces of familiar Americana iconography with recurring images of rotting hogs and half-burnt corpses.

Eventually, no matter how hard she tries to suppress it, there’s nowhere for Pearl’s growing instability to go other than to the surface. Once it does, Pearl  begins to indulge more in the kind of blood-soaked horror and brutality that X fans may have been expecting all along. However, as impactful as much of the violence is in Pearl ’s final third, it’s Goth’s red-faced, tear-streaked performance that ultimately takes center stage.

After opening with a delightfully macabre prologue, Pearl takes its time getting to the kind of violence and horror its story inherently promises. The film is a slow burn in a way that X very much wasn’t, which makes it far less superficially fun and rewatchable than West’s previous horror effort. Its second act, and especially the pace at which Pearl’s relationship with her mother develops, also drags in certain moments, which occasionally dulls the film’s overwhelming sense of unease.

But every time it seems like Pearl might get lost in the weeds of its own heightened vision of the past, Goth steps up and brings everything back into focus. The actress outdoes her work in X here, delivering a performance as Pearl ’s lead that elicits both pity and fear, often at the same time. Her performance is so central to Pearl , in fact, that the film essentially climaxes with a long monologue that plays out almost entirely in one unbroken close-up of Goth’s mascara-smudged face. The scene might be the best of Goth’s career so far, and it’s followed by an instance of cold-blooded brutality that might be the most technically impressive sequence West has ever pulled off (you’ll know it when you see it).

From there, Pearl achieves a kind of operatic quality that manages to mostly justify the prolonged build-up. Whether or not the film’s climax makes it as effective as that of X will, however, likely vary depending on the tastes of its viewers. X  made a lasting impression because of how it pulled its tropes from the wells of various horror classics only to twist them in ways that were often surprising and darkly funny. Pearl , on the other hand, frequently draws inspiration from movies and stories that are, at most, only tangentially related to the horror genre.

The resulting film is a sun-soaked and vibrant slice of technicolor horror that’s both more technically impressive and subtler than X . The film presents its horrors more nakedly than X does, but it traffics in a sense of unease that is far less visceral than the straightforward, slasher-driven violence of its predecessor. Neither approach is more valid than the other, but it’s a testament to West’s control of his craft that Pearl manages to cast the spell that it does, one that makes it impossible to look away even when the film’s rotten truths are literally staring you in the face.

Pearl hits theaters on Friday, September 16.

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With its lush sets and perpetually probing camera, Decision to Leave looks and moves like any other Park Chan-wook film, but it reverberates with the same untempered passion present in Golden Age noirs like In a Lonely Place and Double Indemnity. Unlike those two films, though, which center their stories around a hot-tempered screenwriter and naïve insurance salesman, respectively, Decision to Leave follows another common noir archetype: the lovelorn detective (played here by Park Hae-il).

In the film’s opening moments, Hae-jun, the detective in question, lands a case involving the mysterious death of a recreational rock climber. The case, in typical noir fashion, leads to Hae-jun crossing paths with Seo-rae (a spellbinding Tang Wei), his victim’s gorgeous but eccentric widow. Perturbed by how disinterested she is in unpacking her abusive husband’s death, Hae-jun begins to tail and spy on Seo-rae, unaware that doing so will only further intensify his attraction to her. As far as noir plots go, this is about as familiar as it gets. With its nods to Hitchcock and lightly self-aware attitude, Decision to Leave makes it clear that it doesn’t mind treading the same narrative terrain as so many of the noir classics that have come before it, either.

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Pearl review – Ti West’s demented Technicolor homage to old Hollywood

Co-writer Mia Goth is phenomenal as a deranged teenager breaking loose in rural Texas as the flu pandemic strikes

W ith its lush, sumptuously sweeping score, saturated Technicolor photography and kitsch wipe edits, Ti West’s Pearl would be a dead ringer for a 1940s melodrama were it not for all the axe violence and hayfork skewering. A prequel to West’s previous picture, X , it was co-written with star Mia Goth during a Covid quarantine period. The result of this meeting of twisted minds is a gloriously demented homage to old Hollywood. West combines witty cine-literacy with a flair for explosive bursts of deranged bloodshed. Just call him Douglas Sirk-opath.

The year is 1918. The first world war rages and a flu pandemic is claiming casualties on the home front. But Pearl (a phenomenal Goth) has big dreams that extend far beyond her life of joyless drudgery on her parents’ farm in rural Texas. She wants to dance, and plans to hoof her way out of Texas and into adoration and movie stardom. When she learns of an audition at the local church, she realises that this is her chance to escape her overbearing mother once and for all.

The full-blooded, gleefully lurid tone of the film-making demands an oversized performance to match, and Goth is more than up to the job. She peels back the skin of the character and fills it with kittenish cruelty and the creeping rot of madness, all topped off with a monstrous, distorting need to be loved. Goth is riotously entertaining throughout, but two specific scenes, in both of which the camera rests solely on her face for an extended shot, capture the full force of her unnerving talent.

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Pearl Review

Audiences for Ti West ’s effective, gruesome retro-shocker X — in which porno filmmakers run into an aged, homicidal farmwife in 1979 — were doubly surprised by the end credits. First, there was the revelation that ‘final girl’ Maxine and pension-age mass murderess Pearl were both played (extraordinarily) by Mia Goth . Then, there was a trailer for a Pearl-centric prequel which West and Goth (who co-wrote Pearl ) put together before the first film was released. This might seem presumptuous or ill-advised — like making  Joker , but with a newly minted character who hasn’t yet permeated pop culture. Several entries in the Texas Chainsaw franchise (to which X owes a huge, admitted debt) stumble by telling more than anyone cares to know about where Leatherface came from.

In the event, Pearl isn’t an exercise in filmmakers doing their own fan fiction but the ambitious, impressive centrepiece in what’s now revealed as a trilogy. The threads will be drawn together next year in MaXXXine , which picks up Maxine’s story in 1985. Ti West has always been in love with recreating bygone modes of cinema — 2009’s The House Of The Devil , his breakthrough picture, was a perfect pastiche of the 1970s TV horror movie, and In A Valley Of Violence (2016) is a suspense Western — while finding ways of connecting the pop culture of the past with the things that scare us today. Pearl is set during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, but the characters (who wear masks to venture into town) suffer from many of the woes of the modern lockdown era. Even isolated Pearl’s dream of becoming a movie star feels as close to a present-day aspiration to YouTube fame or influencer status as the eternal yearning of girls on farms to be spirited over the rainbow, as enshrined in classic Hollywood.

Just as X cobbled together elements from exploitation horror and sex films of the 1970s, Pearl references inside-the-mind-of-a-maniac horror movies.

West never lets the viewer forget that this is a new-old movie. The opening credits, over a freeze-frame of the smiling Pearl feeding a pitchfork-skewered goose to her alligator best friend, are in a swirly pink font. The almost-continuous orchestral score by Tyler Bates and Timothy Williams is a romantic counterpoint to the onscreen action. Pearl herself is constantly referring to the movies (she names her cows after film stars) and sneaking out against her grim mother’s (Tandi Wright) wishes, to waste money in the local picture palace. With her husband (Alistair Sewell) overseas — she imagines him waving cheerily as he comes home, stepping on a landmine in her yard and being blown to bloody little bits — Pearl is attracted to a ridiculously handsome projectionist (David Corenswet). In his secret cinema stash is a stag reel foreshadowing the Deep Throat-era smut of X , which will rekindle Pearl’s sexual fantasies and killer instincts.

Pearl dances with a scarecrow and filches its top hat for her dance costume, but West and Goth take another Oz image and present it as an expression of frustrated sexuality and seething, incipient mania. Just as X cobbled together elements from exploitation horror and sex films of the 1970s, Pearl references inside-the-mind-of-a-maniac horror movies. A cooked pig left on the porch, which Pearl’s starving but proud mother won’t eat because it’s a charitable gift from her son-in-law’s family, decays and crawls with maggots like the rabbit that parallels Catherine Deneuve ’s mental collapse in Repulsion . Pearl sometimes seems on her way to becoming Norman Bates’ mother, and a tableau of corpses around the dinner table evokes Psycho , The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the slightly less mainstream down-home horror hit Deranged . The dilapidated farm of X is seen here 60 years earlier, with a fresh coat of paint, but that flesh-hungry ’gator already lurks in the lake on the property and Pearl is well on the way to becoming a magnificent monster.

In recent years, there’s been a tradition of female actors getting showcase roles in horror — Essie Davis in The Babadook , Toni Collette in Hereditary , Rebecca Hall in The Night House . Goth, whose range encompasses Lars von Trier ( Nymphomaniac ) and Jane Austen ( Emma. ), is an astonishing addition to this company. In a turning point, Pearl demands to know why the projectionist isn’t attracted to her anymore, and the grown-up gives a child’s response: “You’re scaring me.” Goth does a great deal more than scare us, with a showstopper soliloquy delivered to her absent husband, eloquent physical action in dance and murder scenes (she’s as limber a performer as the robot girl in  M3GAN ) — and a final smile more frightening than any of the rictus grins in Smile , perhaps the equal of the smirk on Mrs Bates’ mummified skull.

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Pearl Review: A Solid Slasher Prequel

By Jonathan Sim

Six months after the release of Ti West’s elderly slasher movie,  X , West gives us a prequel centered around the villain of that film.  Pearl  is a not-so-long-awaited slasher film set in 1918 against the backdrop of World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic. Mia Goth reprises her role as Pearl in her origin story. She’s a young woman trying to be a Hollywood star but she comes into conflict with her devout mother and ailing father. West delivers another shocking slasher, as  Pearl  is a decently crafted film that goes into a killer’s backstory.

West successfully updates his cinematic universe for the times. While  X  was set in 1979 and looked like it was made in that era of 20th-century slashers,  Pearl  is set a century in the past. The visual aesthetic matches that step decades prior, with the movie offering a Technicolor style along the lines of  The Wizard of Oz . The opening credits and title card are a product of this era, allowing for a jarring contrast from the style of  X , which made full use of the ’70s pornographic premise.

This movie begins with a Disney-style opening, with deceptively orchestral music that would almost have you believe you’re in for an age-old family film. Everything feels happy and whimsical as we are introduced to our young protagonist, who dreams of getting off her farm and becoming an actress in Hollywood. However, the cute, bright-eyed nature of the film does not last long. You’re not seated for this origin story to see a happy-go-lucky, heartwarming tale. Once the movie takes a dark turn, it commits to it and we get the heart-stopping kills that the film promises.

But this movie’s key risk is not focusing on the kills very much. While they’re there,  Pearl  is much more of a family melodrama that takes a shocking twist. Sometimes, it feels like the viewing experience would be better if you were expecting no kills at all so that once it happens, it becomes a shock. The movie pulls a lot of drama out of Pearl’s relationship with her family. She has a strict, disapproving mother named Ruth (Tandi Wright), with whom she shares a lot of tension as they both have to care for Pearl’s father (Matthew Sunderland).

The film uses family drama as much as possible while sometimes feeling a bit conventional and familiar in how it tells that story. The family dynamics don’t offer much originality, but they do an excellent job filling in some holes in Pearl’s backstory. There are nods to  X , but the film tells its own story and knows how to cater to its audience. This is more of a drama with slasher elements, but that can sometimes hurt the movie, as it’s not as gripping, suspenseful, or exciting as  X  was due to their differing ambitions.

But the selling point here is Mia Goth. She did an excellent job with her dual role as Max and Pearl in  X , so much so that I did not know the same person played them. This time, Goth gets free reign as an unhinged killer while nailing her emotional scenes. She delivers a long monologue in one take and her co-writing credit on this film shows her creative influence and passion for bringing this project to life. She is the selling point for this movie, especially in  Pearl ‘s haunting final shot.

Overall, West doesn’t deliver the way he did with  X , but he manages to do a lot. This film was written during the production of its predecessor and he already has another movie in this series planned called  MaXXXine , set in 1985. However, before we get there, it is worth it for  X  fans to check out this prequel with a lot of dark ideas — many of which are executed superbly. Between the two movies, this is the one you’ll be less likely to rewatch, but it works as a decent prequel.

SCORE : 6/10

As ComingSoon’s  review policy  explains, a score of 6 equates to “Decent.” It fails to reach its full potential and is a run-of-the-mill experience.

Disclosure: The critic attended a press screening for ComingSoon’s  Pearl  review.

Jonathan Sim is a film critic and filmmaker born and raised in New York City. He has met/interviewed some of the leading figures in Hollywood, including Christopher Nolan, Zendaya, Liam Neeson, and Denis Villeneueve. He also works as a screenwriter, director, and producer on independent short films.

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Pearl Jam Dig Deep and Find a New Light on ‘Dark Matter’

By John Lonsdale

John Lonsdale

It kicks off with a big emotional bang: “We used to laugh/We used to sing/We used to dance/We used to believe,” Eddie Vedder sings on “Scared of Fear,” the rocking opener from Pearl Jam ’s 12th studio album, one of their best and most personal records ever. When it came time to work on their follow-up to 2020’s Gigaton , band members headed out to Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La Studios in Malibu and worked with versatile producer Andrew Watt, who helmed Vedder’s 2022 solo album, Earthling, and has worked with everyone from Iggy Pop to pop superstars like Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, and Post Malone. 

“We’re still looking for ways to communicate,” Vedder told listeners at an L.A. preview of the new tracks. “We’re at this time in our lives when you could do it or you could not do it, but we still care about putting something out there that is meaningful, and we hopefully think is our best work. No hyperbole, I think this is our best work.”

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But Dark Matter shines brightest in its most restrained moments. Take the heartbreaking highlight “Wreckage,” a laid-back stunner complete with empathetic, Springsteen-inspired vocals, and lyrics that seem to be about holding on to a fading relationship. “Combing through the wreckage/Pouring through the sand/Surrounded by the remnants/What we could and couldn’t have,” Vedder sings.  

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Dark Matter ends on a meditative note with “Setting Sun,” a hopeful, transcendently gorgeous nightcap that feels like the band took a drive down from Shangri-La at the end of the day to sit in the sand, and reflect for a while as they watch the waves crash along the PCH. “May our days be long until kingdom come,” Vedder howls. “We can become one last setting sun/Am I the only one hanging on?/We could become one last setting sun/Or be the sun at the break of dawn/Let us not fade/Let us not fade.” But with Dark Matter , the band has rarely sounded more essential.

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Pearl Jam: Dark Matter – Global Theatrical Experience (2024)

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Pearl Jam – ‘Dark Matter’ review: some of their strongest work in recent memory

On their 12th studio album, the grunge veterans both return to their heavier roots and experiment with new sonic avenues after years of playing it safe

33 years and 12 albums in, Pearl Jam fans would be forgiven for thinking they know exactly what to expect from the band by now. From dominating the ‘90s rock scene with their 13-times platinum breakthrough ‘Ten’ to a middle-of-the-road stint in the ‘00s with lacklustre, bluesy albums ‘Binaural’ and 2006’s self-titled snoozer, it seemed up until now that the band’s heyday had been left in the past. Yet, with ‘Dark Matter’ – their first release since 2020’s ‘Gigaton’ – Eddie Vedder and co. prove they still have some surprises up their sleeve.

From the get-go, the grunge icons deliver some of their most hard-hitting work in recent years, launching into explosive tracks ‘Scared Of Fear’ and ‘React, Respond’, which are not dissimilar from the classics in ‘Vitalogy’ and ‘Vs’. This time around though, they have not only ventured back to their roots, but combined it with their decades of experience.

Nowhere is this refinement showcased better than the title track. Alongside delivering the same rapturous hit of energy that first put Pearl Jam on the scene , it also showcases the instrumental virtuosity of bassist Jeff Ament and lead guitarist Mike McCready, as the two playfully toy with dynamics and show off some scarcely seen flashiness.

Yes, the thing that stands out most about ‘Dark Matter’ is Pearl Jam’s ability to still let rip 33 years down the line, however, this is a bold move that doesn’t always pay off. While the aforementioned tracks stand out as some of the strongest moments on the album, later additions like ‘Running’ seem to fall flat, as a whirlwind of lyrics and heavy riffs arrive in substitute of substance.

This isn’t to say that the members have turned their back on their musical evolution though, as a hefty chunk of the LP still pays homage to their more recent, blues-flavoured stylings. ‘Wreckage’, ‘Won’t Tell’ and ‘Something Special’, for instance, sit in the realm of more recent albums like ‘Lightning Bolt’ – taking a stripped-back, almost-country approach as Vedder lays down his signature vocals over the top.

Tucked away in the latter half of the LP though, an interesting shift is introduced in the form of the experimental ‘Upper Hand’ and emotionally-rich ‘Setting Sun’. Here, not only do the band prove they’re in top form musically, but the lyrics from Vedder have the power to take it to the next level. “ I held the dream you would stay with me ’til kingdom come/ Turns out it was more like hit and run/ Am I the only one hanging on? ” he questions in the latter, as the album draws to a close — a line which feels particularly heavy given the tragic fate that has followed frontmen in the grunge scene.

For those longing for the charismatic songwriting that first put the band on the map over three decades ago, ‘Dark Matter’ will come as a pleasant surprise. Not only does it showcase Pearl Jam reclaiming the charm that first made them a force to be reckoned with back in 1991, it comes alongside some of their most impressive musicianship yet, as well as a determination to take risks after years of playing it safe.

• Release date:  April 19, 2024
• Record label:  Republic Records
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