Pearl is a welcome gory addition to the X Cinematic Universe

With pearlWriter-director Ti West embraces and elevates what horror films can do in a way that further cements his reputation as one of the best things to ever happen to the genre.

A prequel to West’s terrifying X—his second film inXCU”, with a third, MaXXXineon road-pearl tells the gory and tragic origin story of its sexually charged, identity-hungry title character, played by Mia Goth, in a performance worthy of movie star status. By digging through Pearl’s history, a violent (and sometimes intentional grinding house-y) cautionary tale about the dangers of suppressing one’s desires, both carnal and otherwise, West taps into thematically rich veins in a way few of his contemporaries have ever explored in the field. Working from a script co-written by Goth, West wields Pearl’s trauma-laced backstory effortlessly like a scalpel as his star catapults through the film’s 102-minute runtime pearl joins the ranks of the most satisfying and unsettling marriages of character-first storytelling, making it one of the best films of the year across all genres.

pearl trades in X‘s gritty visual aesthetic of late ’70s porn for a technicolor palette, while West pulls back the curtain on the origins of Goth’s very old, very murderous iteration of Pearl X. Her violent demise begins at the end of World War I in 1918, when Pearl’s attempts to escape a remote life on a Texas farm lead to a tinseltown eager to hunt down dreamers like her. Pearl uses films to escape not only from her everyday life, but also from her broken self. In doing so, she becomes trapped in a nightmare that she created herself.

Pearl’s obsession with movies blurs the line between aspirations she wishes were real and a reality she can’t seem to accept. Her husband wages trench warfare abroad while she’s stuck at home with an emotionally abusive German mother (Tandi Wright) and a creepy, wheelchair-bound father (Matthew Sunderland). Pearl wants to be a star, with disastrous results: although her fantasies are full of fantastic colors, she applies a black and white mentality to realize them, leaving no room for nuance or error. Pearl’s inability to adjust to the harsh consequences of unfulfilled expectations leads her down a deadly path, especially as she becomes increasingly aware of her weak grasp of reality.

Goth is quite compelling with her portrayal of Pearl as a doe-eyed peasant girl, but she and the film are at their most compelling when her character struggles to see and experience the real world like everyone else is doing. In a pivotal scene depicting a dance audition, Goth’s reaction is heartbreaking. The way West lets such character moments breathe helps transport the audience to the moment with Pearl struggling to understand how painful the world can be for those who don’t know how to deal with it. While we know how Pearl’s story ends, we share her fear and unease at the events that will shape her murderous end.

It’s a delicate and tricky balancing act that West is walking here, trying to inspire sympathy for a hero who is destined to become a ruthless villain. For once, he gets past the somewhat distracting visual callbacks of the first act XWest charges forward on more stable narrative ground as he digs deeper into Pearl’s fragile sanity, filtered through her infatuation with The Projectionist (David Corenswet).

A lot of pearlGoth’s greatness rests on talented shoulders. She is passionately committed to every frame of Pearl’s film-like fantasy world, making her performance all the more haunting and haunted as that fantasy unravels. The shards of film in her head prove deadly, in increasingly exaggerated ways, to those who stand in her way. But there isn’t anyone in the audience who can’t relate to a dream unfulfilled, and by making Pearl West and goth relatable, Pearl’s inevitable spiral is grounded with emotional honesty. The insane set pieces will satisfy genre fans, but they also resonate deeper due to Pearl’s underlying motivations.

This attention to character-driven horror is one of them pearlhas many charms. Combined with West’s use of surreal imagery and production design to set this film apart from its predecessor – as well as the slow-burning suspense and set pieces that led to it X so endearing — the film narrowly avoids camp by depicting the title character’s emotional struggles in an outwardly, physically violent manner.

violence in the world pearl is as inevitable and unchanging as gravity, West suggests. But not how X‘s dusty fun, a melancholic atmosphere hangs over the carnage, all underscored by West’s fascination with the tragic endings that come from basing future hopes on the shakiest of present realities. If only more horror movies dared to dream so big with such emotion charged results.