Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (February 5, 2024)
With a worldwide gross of only $14 million, Ti West’s 2022 horror flick X didn’t sell a ton of tickets. As such, it comes as a surprise that it inspired a prequel.
However, this feels like less of a shock when one learns that West shot X and 2022’s Pearl back-to-back. This meant Pearl was already in the can before X made it to multiplexes.
X introduced Pearl (Mia Goth) as a homicidal elderly woman circa 1979. Pearl goes back about 60 years to investigate the character’s “origin story”.
Set in rural Texas circa 1918, Pearl finds herself stuck on her family’s isolated farm. In addition to the duties that setting requires, she tends to the needs of her disabled father (Matthew Sunderland) and contends with the demands of her devout and strict mother (Tandi Wright).
Pearl dreams of stardom in movies, and this leads to frustration with her current lot in life. Not the most mentally stable of ladies, Pearl reacts to her situation via increasingly violent methods.
Apparently West intends a third movie in this franchise, one entitled MaXXXine and set after the events of X. Perhaps that one will hit the mark, but X didn’t work for me, and Pearl does little to improve on that model.
Though I do find some positives here, as at least Pearl deviates from the tried ‘n’ true horror tactics. Not that it avoids all the tropes, but West makes the movie something unusual for the format.
In particular, West fashions Pearl in the mode of a piece of classic Hollywood. It occasionally feels like a perverse Wizard of Oz, with farm girl who dreams of a more grandiose life.
Of course, Dorothy’s murders occurred unintentionally and only involved witches. Pearl goes on a more obvious killing spree.
Even so, the film mines unusual territory for a flick in its genre. Whatever else I might think of Pearl, I give it credit for that willingness to depart from the norm.
I also appreciate that Pearl offers a “slow burn” story, with only occasional horror stabs during its first half. We get obvious hints that Pearl ain’t right in the head – such as when she gratuitously kills a goose – but the movie doesn’t ladle out the gore early.
That allows Pearl to feel more self-confident than most in the genre. Too many modern films of this sort feel that if they don’t toss gore at the viewers right from the start, the audience will balk.
That tendency irritates me, as it often means violence that comes too soon and ruins the story’s flow. Pearl manages to set up its character and her mental issues in a more gradual way, and I like that.
Despite all these positives, I admit I find Pearl to end up as a less than satisfying movie, mainly because it seems more like a cinematic experiment than a full-fledged tale. I get the impression West liked the idea of a bloody horror tale melded with classic Hollywood feel so much that he cobbled a less than compelling story around it.
Let’s face it: all the creativity here comes from the stylistic choices. As clever as it seems to place violent material in a warm Technicolor glow, this doesn’t compensate for the fairly cliché story on display.
Granted, one could argue that the trite nature of so much of what we see comes with the territory. Because West wanted to make a movie that threw back to early Hollywood, he may’ve felt that it should embrace various tropes as part of the concept.
This doesn’t lead to a satisfying narrative, though, and we can see pretty much everything that Pearl does come from a mile away. Precious few actual surprises arise.
I would still rate Pearl as above average for its genre. Whatever its flaws, at least it attempts something different.
Nonetheless, it still feels more like a cinematic experiment than a complete movie. Pearl boasts strengths but doesn’t quite fit together in the end.
