MY CALL: This film is a fine character study, and Mia Goth gives the performance of her life (so far). Still, this film titillates far less than its predecessor. I admire what was done here, but I don’t really see myself returning for subsequent viewings. MORE MOVIES LIKE Pearl: Well, hopefully you’ve already seen X (2022), which occurs in 1979 long after the events of Pearl. And then move on to Maxxxine (2024).
Mia Goth (X, Infinity Pool, Suspiria, A Cure for Wellness) portrayed both Pearl and Maxine in X (2022), a very pleasant surprise for movie fans. Swiftly becoming quite the horror icon, Mia Goth reprises her elderly role with the youthful prequel story of Pearl, now also as a co-writer. Director and writer Ti West (X, The Innkeepers, House of the Devil, The Sacrament) has clearly found his muse and favorite colleague in Goth, as this would be the second of his X trilogy starring Goth (with Maxxxine to follow).
Such a strong start! Down to the classic scoring and on-screen font of the opening credits, this film begins with purity, innocence, and the wholesome feels of a 30s to 40s-era family film. Even when the cinematic rug is briefly yanked from beneath young Pearl’s feet by her draconian German mother (Tandi Wright; Alibi), the bright technicolor and timely music persists as she practically wishes upon a star to escape her family farm and find fame. A perfect, stable ziggurat-staircase of haystack allows her to strut to the top as if in a Broadway musical, and the timely arrival and bloody fate of a goose harbingers the change in tone to come.
Safe at home in 1918 while her husband (Alistair Sewell; Bad Behaviour) is away at war, Pearl helps tend to the farm chores, caring for her invalid father, and dreaming of motion pictures. She swoons scarecrows with musical numbers, fantasizes physical affections, and enjoys a curiosity in the macabre. As Pearl yearns for fame and love, she seems to be living an adult fairy tale with a wicked, disapproving mother.
In her rebellious journey, she frees herself of her abusive mother. As Pearl finds a lustful love (David Corenswet), we come to find her true madness within. She is sociopathic, generally disturbed, obsessive, and overwhelmed with a sense of inadequacy.
The violence includes a healthy dose of bloody farm-implement stabbery and some horrible moist burn wounds. While a few scenes are quite brutally graphic, this is overall less horror-ish in tone than X (2022), with a more limited sense of dread. Instead this film focuses on the exploration of Pearl, the character who we meet in her venerable years in X (2022).
I’ll hand it to Mia Goth, she does crazy fantastically. Manic, hysterical, sociopathic, lovelorn… she nails them all. This was an impressive film experience. But I’m not sure I’d recommend it, whereas I strongly recommend X (2022).