Pearl (2023) Dir. Ti West

It’s increasingly rare a horror franchise springs up in this day and age that isn’t a reboot or based on an existing and well-known property. But Ti West not only delivered a great film in his 70s-tinged fright flick X, he secretly shot his own prequel back-to-back whilst making it.

In X, Mia Goth starred as scream queen Maxine who wanted to make it in porno but was stalked and attacked by the violent geriatric antagonist Pearl (also played by Goth). And here she reprises her role but as a younger-aged Pearl in the past.

Set in 1918, Pearl lives on a farm whilst her husband is away at war. She is obsessed by the world of cinema and dreams of becoming famous, much to the chagrin of her paralysed father and domineering mother.

As in X, Ti West pays homage to cinema but this time with somewhat on-the-nose allusions to classic Hollywood. A raunchy onanism scene sees Pearl do the dirty with a filthy scarecrow (welcome to Oz, folks) and the chorus sequences harks to Busby Berkley musicals. And Goth’s over-the-top delivery of lines, the Technicolor visual grading and its soaring score all add to this golden age feel too.

But despite the influences, the film couldn’t be further from that genre’s mostly wholesome tone. Pearl shows disturbing signs by killing farm animals without a care and later abusing her parents before heading to a picture house where everything from violent war footage to upbeat dance numbers play.

Here she builds a relationship with a projectionist, but her lustful thoughts and jealousy soon get the better of her. And although she sees a way out of her unsatisfying rural life via an audition for a chorus line, her dark persona that will do anything to escape, results in Pearl enacting horrors on everyone around her.

She also clashes with her prim and proper friend Mitsy and the familiar themes (and locations) from X, such as the obsessions with fame and the moving image, as well as sex and violence going hand in hand, all return here.

In my X review, I mentioned how that film explores tragic themes of lost youth and remorse and it’s brilliantly weaved in again, which helps give context to the former film. Prequels have a tendency to over-explain or demystify characters and their motivations. But Pearl actually develops these by taking a different angle. It certainly doesn’t do any harm that the films were released relatively close to each other before any fan-base started obsessing over its expanded universe details.

And this long-form story isn’t ending here either. Ti West has a third instalment planned in the form of MaXXXine, which will see Goth’s survivor in X heading to 1980s Los Angeles.

Pearl’s increasingly erratic mood swings and subsequent outbursts of violence see the film edge towards a dark conclusion that leads well into the world we pick up in X. And with compelling drama, a tour-de-force Goth performance and impressively stylised design, it ends as another fantastic achievement.

Pearl accomplishes this by lifting the look, sound and visuals from a Hollywood era separate from X’s sleazy b-movie origins but uses this new genre’s aspects to expand upon its dissection of generational aspiration and disillusionment. Once again, West has brilliantly weaved how Americans see childhood dreams clashing with old-age realities in another terrific, and horrific, love/hate letter to the movies.

★★★★

4/5

Michael Sales