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‘Pearl’ Review: A Farmer’s Daughter Moves Up the Food Chain

A horror-movie killer gets a surprising origin story in Ti West’s prequel to “X.”

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By A.O. Scott

If you have seen “X,” Ti West’s ingenious and heartfelt pastiche of ’70s horror and hard-core pornography, you know that Mia Goth plays two roles. (If you haven’t seen it, there are spoilers ahead.) She is Maxine, an aspiring movie star and the designated survivor of a rural killing spree. Disguised by prosthetic makeup, she is also a horny and homicidal farmer’s wife named Pearl, and does a lot of killing.

In “Pearl,” which Goth wrote with West, she repeats that role, playing Pearl as a horny and homicidal farmer’s daughter. That’s not the setup for a dirty joke, and this prequel, set in 1918, is less of a dirty movie than “X” aspired to be. There is some sex and plenty of gore, but mostly an atmosphere of feverish, lurid melodrama leavened with winks of knowing humor and held together by Goth’s utterly earnest and wondrously bizarre performance.

More than 50 years before the events in “X,” Pearl lives on the same Texas farm, with its creaky yellow house, its cavernous barn, and a hungry alligator in the pond. Her life is an endless cycle of toil and frustration. Her husband, Howard, is away at war, leaving her alone with her parents: a pious, dictatorial German mother (Tandi Wright) and a father (Matthew Sunderland) who has been incapacitated by the flu. Money is scarce, and Pearl escapes by sneaking off to the movies while she’s running errands in town.

She dreams of running off to pursue a career in pictures, practicing song-and-dance routines in anticipation of a big break. She also practices what we know from “X” will be one of her later vocations. When a goose wanders into the barn and looks at her funny, she impales it on a pitchfork and feeds it to the alligator. The arc of “Pearl” charts her progress up the food chain, from poultry to human prey.

The bloodshed is at least as grisly as the slaughter in “X,” but “Pearl” occupies a different corner of the slasher-movie universe. It isn’t especially suspenseful — the identity of the killer is never in doubt, and her victims don’t elicit much sympathy — but it has a strange, hallucinatory intensity. The emotions and the colors are gaudy and overwrought, the music (by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams) is frenzied and portentous, but the film is too sincere, too tender toward its peculiar heroine, to count as camp.

It’s also a bit thin and undercooked, but Goth’s performance transcends its limits. She is by turns childlike, seductive and terrifying. Pearl falls into an affair with the local movie-house projectionist (David Corenswet), who introduces her to French pornography and dazzles her with the promise of a Bohemian life free of small-town constraints. She seethes and simpers around her parents, and tries to be friends with her wholesome blonde sister-in-law (Emma Jenkins-Purro). Through it all, Pearl grapples with stifling social and domestic expectations and with her irrepressible hunger for freedom, fame and erotic release.

Goth might remind you at times of Judy Garland in youth, of Shelley Duvall in the ’70s, or of a demonically possessed Raggedy Ann doll, but she has her own fearless and forthright intensity. West wants you to see that Pearl, a monster in the making, is also a heroine for the ages. Goth will make you believe it. Or else.

Pearl Rated R. Stay out of the barn, and the basement. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Pearl is a slasher prequel that makes the original even better

A killer follow-up to x creates a promising new horror franchise.

By Andrew Webster , an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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When X came out earlier this year, it was a capable, well-crafted homage to ’70s slasher flicks from director Ti West, but there wasn’t much to it beyond that. It turns out the project is much bigger than that one-off story. As was teased at the end of X , we now have a prequel, Pearl , that tells the origin story of its titular bloodthirsty killer. On their own, the two films each offer a satisfying amount of scares and gore. But it’s when you put them together that they become much more intriguing.

This review contains spoilers for both Pearl and X.

X told the story of a group of young folks attempting to film a porn movie in a rented farmhouse before being steadily killed by the murderous elderly couple they were renting from. Pearl explains how that couple got so murderous. Its predecessor pulled liberally from classic horror movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , but Pearl goes in a different direction. It’s much more like The Wizard of Oz. Only, you know, with lots of blood and guts.

Set in 1918, it stars Pearl (Mia Goth), a simple farm girl with dreams of being a star. Problem is, her husband (Alistair Sewell) is away fighting in World War I, her father (Matthew Sunderland) is sick with the Spanish flu, and her strict mother (Tandi Wright) needs Pearl’s help to keep their struggling farm going. Despite a seemingly cheery disposition, Pearl feels trapped. She sneaks out whenever she can to watch movies, dreaming of one day being a dancer on-screen. But it’s not long before the cracks start to show. Early on, she randomly kills a farm animal with a casual kind of blood lust, and later, she has a surprisingly intimate moment with a scarecrow. Something is wrong, and Pearl knows it. She just doesn’t know how to fix it.

Things really start to change when she meets the local projectionist (David Corenswet), a self-proclaimed Bohemian who introduces her to smut movies and the idea of living life for yourself. While her mother dismisses Pearl’s dreams, the projectionist actually supports them, fueling her desires. Soon after, her glamorous sister-in-law Misty (Emma Jenkins-Purro) convinces Pearl to audition for a local dance troupe. What follows is a series of unfortunate events that leads to Pearl ultimately becoming uncoupled from reality and taking her first steps into the wide world of being a slasher movie villain.

Pearl works as a standalone horror movie; the contrast between The Wizard of Oz vibe and the lurking dread builds a wonderful kind of tension and makes the moments of bloodshed hit that much harder. It helps that Goth turns in an incredible performance. She shines, particularly during a long, discomforting speech that sees her accept herself as well as the perfect yet painfully awkward credits sequence. Goth’s ability to swap between Pearl’s true self and the mask she wears in public is wonderful to watch.

But what really makes the movie interesting is how it builds on, and adds layers and texture to, its predecessor. X made it clear that Pearl was full of spite and envy, yearning for her younger days. But now, those motivations are much more clear, to the point that she almost becomes a sympathetic figure. We also see how her husband is roped into the whole endeavor and even get an origin story for the alligator. No matter which order you watch them in, each movie strengthens the other.

This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon, of course. Horror movies are often great at building up a mythology over the course of multiple films, whether it’s Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street . But with Pearl and X , much like with Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy , there’s an intentionality that’s clear from the beginning. The mythology isn’t being created on the fly; it’s there from the start, waiting for you to put the pieces together.

There’s more on the way, too: Pearl will be followed by MaXXXine , a direct sequel to X (I know, the titles are confusing) that sees Goth reprise her other role of Maxine as she attempts to make it in LA. Based on the first teaser , it’s clear MaXXXine will have an ’80s vibe, adding another flavor to West’s growing slasher story — and giving Goth another chance to establish herself as one of horror’s most promising new villains.

Pearl is in theaters on September 16th. This review is based on a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.

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In 1918, a young woman on the brink of madness pursues stardom in a desperate attempt to escape the drudgery, isolation, and lovelessness of life on her parents' farm. In 1918, a young woman on the brink of madness pursues stardom in a desperate attempt to escape the drudgery, isolation, and lovelessness of life on her parents' farm. In 1918, a young woman on the brink of madness pursues stardom in a desperate attempt to escape the drudgery, isolation, and lovelessness of life on her parents' farm.

• David Corenswet
• Tandi Wright
• 503 User reviews
• 252 Critic reviews
• 76 Metascore
• 19 wins & 63 nominations

Top cast 12

• Projectionist

• (as Amelia Reid-Meredith)
• (as Lauren May Stewart)
• Ticket Taker
• Crying Girl
• (uncredited)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Ti West and Mia Goth collaborated on the script via FaceTime during a mandatory 2-week quarantine (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) in New Zealand prior to filming X (2022). They had only hoped A24 would agree to make the film. Fortunately, the project was green-lit before filming began on X.
• Goofs The movie "Palace Follies" that Pearl goes to see at the theater has accompanying sound and music. Given that "Pearl" is set in 1918, this is about eight years too early. Although experimental short films sound had been shown as early as 1894, there were no feature-length movies with synchronized sound before "Don Juan" was released in 1926. Of course, given Pearl's troubled mental state, she may have simply imagined the music.

Pearl : [yelling in distress after being rejected] No, I'm a star! Please, I'm a *star!* Please, somebody help me! Please help me! *Help me!*

• Crazy credits The strained smile that Goth holds for more than three minutes behind the closing credits was a spur-of-the-moment inspiration from Ti West. He had planned to film her smiling and then choose a freeze-frame of the most unsettling shot, but at the last minute suggested "What if you hold a smile as long as you possibly can and let's see what happens?" They shot the smile, which "goes from comical to haunting to deeply disturbing the longer it continues," in one take.
• Connections Featured in Chris Stuckmann Movie Reviews: Pearl (2022)
• Soundtracks Oui Oui Marie Written by Al Bryan (as Alfred Bryan), Joseph McCarthy (as Joe McCarthy) and Fred Fisher

User reviews 503

Pearl might not be a star but mia goth certainly is.

• ethanbresnett
• Mar 13, 2023
• How long is Pearl? Powered by Alexa
• September 16, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• New Zealand
• Official A24
• Official Amazon
• Pearl: An X-traordinary Origin Story
• Little Lamb
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Sep 18, 2022
• Runtime 1 hour 43 minutes
• Dolby Atmos

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Pearl review: Mia Goth melts down as a serial killer in the making

A prequel to Ti West's X, Pearl unfolds in a lurid psychological zone that's even scarier.

Senior Editor, Movies

As played by a fresh-faced, subtly unhinged Mia Goth , Pearl performs the tasks that might fall to any farm girl living in 1918 with a husband away fighting the Great War. She tends to her aging parents, sneaking off to the silent movies when she can. She feeds the livestock, chatting with Mr. Deuce, a duck. She tongue-kisses a scarecrow. She casually impales the duck with a pitchfork (sorry, Mr. Deuce), feeding it to an alligator in the local pond. She fantasizes about her husband's body exploding on a mine.

Pearl, if you haven't guessed it, is special ("I'm special," she says to no one in particular), and here's where anyone hoping to avoid spoilers for this movie or Ti West's 1970s-set retro slasher X — to which Pearl is a prequel — will want to check out. In X , Goth pulled off a fun, uncredited double dip, performing as that film's Maxine, a lanky wannabe porn star, and also its decrepit Pearl, the elderly murderous owner of the property on which the crew shoots Maxine's debut, The Farmer's Daughters .

But though it shares a cinematic universe with X (and a similar Searchers -like opening shot), Pearl is the superior film, less beholden to West's occasionally hermetic sense of horror-movie homage , but vibrating with the gushy gestures of Sirk-by-way-of-John-Waters melodrama. The new film explodes with primary colors, sporting a scripted title card with the name of the movie in quotes; it also floats along on that rarest of things, a churning wall-to-wall orchestral score (the intentionally emotive work is by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams).

It's a register well suited to depicting a mind plunging into fury. The dialogue isn't overheated so much as charred: "Malevolence is festering within you," declares Pearl's severe German mother (Tandi Wright), their Carrie -ish dynamic boding well for fans of gory parent-daughter showdowns. Pearl is best viewed as its main character's movie-obsessed vision, everyone else in it mere supporting players to the swirl in her head. Meanwhile, a pig carcass gathers maggots on the front porch, a sight few visitors seem to process as the warning it is.

Co-scripting with her director, Goth is the standout, displaying a verbal vigor and earthiness she's been unable to tap so far (not even in movies like Nymphomaniac and A Cure for Wellness ). Her babyish cheeks and slightly spaced delivery have never been put to better ends, and Goth makes the most of a croaking, lengthy one-take monologue, during which a new horror monster is born. Pearl is the rare origin story where you see the breakdown happening in real time. Grade: A–

Related content:

• Director Ti West went over the rainbow to make 'demented, disturbing' horror prequel Pearl
• How X and Pearl star Mia Goth ended up playing three of 2022's greatest horror roles
• Director Ti West on the locations of X
• Scream star Jenna Ortega says the script for SXSW horror film X was 'the most outrageous thing I'd ever read'

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