When you have seen “X,” Ti West’s ingenious and heartfelt pastiche of ’70s horror and hard-core pornography, you understand that Mia Goth performs two roles. (In case you haven’t seen it, there are spoilers forward.) She is Maxine, an aspiring film star and the designated survivor of a rural killing spree. Disguised by prosthetic make-up, she can also be a attractive and homicidal farmer’s spouse named Pearl, and does plenty of killing.
In “Pearl,” which Goth wrote with West, she repeats that function, taking part in Pearl as a attractive and homicidal farmer’s daughter. That’s not the setup for a unclean joke, and this prequel, set in 1918, is much less of a unclean film than “X” aspired to be. There’s some intercourse and loads of gore, however largely an environment of feverish, lurid melodrama leavened with winks of figuring out humor and held collectively by Goth’s totally earnest and wondrously weird efficiency.
Greater than 50 years earlier than the occasions in “X,” Pearl lives on the identical Texas farm, with its creaky yellow home, its cavernous barn, and a hungry alligator within the pond. Her life is an countless cycle of toil and frustration. Her husband, Howard, is away at struggle, leaving her alone together with her dad and mom: a pious, dictatorial German mom (Tandi Wright) and a father (Matthew Sunderland) who has been incapacitated by the flu. Cash is scarce, and Pearl escapes by sneaking off to the flicks whereas she’s operating errands on the town.
She desires of operating off to pursue a profession in photos, training song-and-dance routines in anticipation of an enormous break. She additionally practices what we all know from “X” will likely be one among her later vocations. When a goose wanders into the barn and appears at her humorous, she impales it on a pitchfork and feeds it to the alligator. The arc of “Pearl” charts her progress up the meals chain, from poultry to human prey.
The bloodshed is no less than as grisly because the slaughter in “X,” however “Pearl” occupies a special nook of the slasher-movie universe. It isn’t particularly suspenseful — the id of the killer is rarely doubtful, and her victims don’t elicit a lot sympathy — nevertheless it has a wierd, hallucinatory depth. The feelings and the colours are gaudy and overwrought, the music (by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams) is frenzied and portentous, however the movie is just too honest, too tender towards its peculiar heroine, to rely as camp.
It’s additionally a bit skinny and undercooked, however Goth’s efficiency transcends its limits. She is by turns childlike, seductive and terrifying. Pearl falls into an affair with the native movie-house projectionist (David Corenswet), who introduces her to French pornography and dazzles her with the promise of a Bohemian life freed from small-town constraints. She seethes and simpers round her dad and mom, and tries to be buddies together with her healthful blonde sister-in-law (Emma Jenkins-Purro). By all of it, Pearl grapples with stifling social and home expectations and together with her irrepressible starvation for freedom, fame and erotic launch.
Goth would possibly remind you at occasions of Judy Garland in youth, of Shelley Duvall within the ’70s, or of a demonically possessed Raggedy Ann doll, however she has her personal fearless and forthright depth. West needs you to see that Pearl, a monster within the making, can also be a heroine for the ages. Goth will make you imagine it. Or else.
Pearl
Rated R. Keep out of the barn, and the basement. Working time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.