Pearl review: Mia Goth is breathtaking in a flawed horror prequel

Ti West was a horror filmmaker and director who premiered his period slasher. XSXSW, March 20, 2222. It featured a surprise announcement: an ending credits trailer for a prequel. PearlThis would complete the backstory X’s ruthless main villain. For Pearl’s North American West premiered the film at Toronto International Film Festival September 2013. He pulled another similar trick: a teaser for the third movie and an announcement about it. MaXXXineThis is a continuation of X. Which? XThis is a tribute to 70s-style independent horror films, West states MaXXXine will be inspired by the ’80s VHS boom — which the tracking lines, color glitches, and synth score on the MaXXXine The teaser is sure to underline.

It is time to go Pearl as the middle movie in a trilogy (so far, at least), and also as the series’ biggest outlier. With better visuals than XMia Goth’s performance is extraordinary and impressive, with a more rambling plot. Pearl loses the fun parts of Ti West’s pastiche. It still packs a lot of excitement and delivers some great moments. It’s both a vividly painted nightmare and a showcase for its star.

XIt was established during the independent filmmaking boom in the 1970s as a tribute. Texas Chain Saw MassacreThe porn industry’s eyes. Mia Goth does a stellar job as Maxine the final girl and Pearl as Pearl, her killer. XIt is full of laughter, heartbreak, inspiring editing, and thoughtful commentary on moviemaking.

Christopher Moss/A24.

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. Howard is currently in Europe fighting for the end of all wars. Howard’s husband, Pearl, lives with her parents. 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. You can hear the sound of coughing everywhere Pearl goes. This is a great coincidence.

Pearl hates her limited life under her mother’s eyes and judgment, and the only escapism she finds is at the movies. Dreaming of becoming a ballet dancer, she dreams of performing in front large crowds. She dances with her pets, whom she named after favorite film stars. To feed an alligator in the nearby pond, she sometimes kills one of the animals. She meets David Corenswet, a self-serving projectionist at the local movie house. He sells her big dreams of working in dance and going to Europe. 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 first reason why you need to see is Pearl is Mia Goth’s mesmerizing, tour-de-force performance. Her performance is filled with innocence and wistfulness that will make you root for her even though they know all about her past crimes and feel appalled at her present choices. The film’s look may have been inspired by Technicolor marvels such as The Wizard of Oz, Goth’s performance is straight out of Alfred Hitchcock’s PsychoYou can be kind, charming, or terrifying and insane one minute and then deranged, the next.

Where X Inspired heavily by early Indie Slashers’ DIY, cheap aesthetic, Pearl This is an attempt to replicate colorful visions of the spirit 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.

Christopher Moss/A24.

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 XAn ageist villain, who kills attractive and sexually active young people to satisfy his petty jealousy. 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. You might like X Before it PearlIts central character is nothing more than a stock-slasher-movie psycho with selfish aspirations, no moral compass and a hunger for blood.

PearlIt is Mia Goth’s debut as a horror actress. West creates beautiful Technicolor nightmares with the help of brightly colored backgrounds and vivid colors. But the pieces don’t add up into anything more than a shiny surface. PearlThis proves that it doesn’t matter how much you can shoot a movie in secret doesn’t mean you have to.

Pearl September 16: The debut in theatres