1918 -- Pearl lives on a farm with her mother and incapacitated, wheelchair-bound father; her husband Howard is away in Europe fighting in the war. Pearl longs for a different life, dreaming of fame as a dancer, but such fantasies are unlikely to become reality: she doesn't really have what it takes to be an entertainer, and then there's the fact that she's totally cuckoo.
I approach A24 horror films with trepidation: their 'elevated' approach usually means that I'll be bored and irritated by what I see. Ti West's X, however, was a reasonably entertaining movie -- a little slow and underwhelming to begin with but picking up for a very enjoyable second half.
Pearl, the prequel to X, is also slow burn, as one might expect from West, and it is very different in tone to his previous movie, but it's also one of A24's better films thanks to a standout performance from Mia Goth, who makes the film's titular character so much more than a one-dimensional movie psycho.
Pearl is a complex character, deeply troubled but well aware of the fact that she is somehow different to most people; she desperately wants to fit in, to be loved, to have the perfect life that she sees others enjoying, but it is not to be -- her insanity, anger and violence is barely restrained. Her mother sees what Pearl is capable of and tries to keep her daughter under control, but ultimately even she cannot stop the inevitable from happening.
Not exactly a horror film, although horrific and bloody things do happen, Pearl is more of a character study, in which the character in question is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Goth is extremely impressive, particularly in the scene where she confesses her sins to her soon-to-be-dead sister-in-law Mitsi (Emma Jenkins-Purro). Even if the film isn't to your liking in terms of style, it's hard to deny that its star is anything less than superb, successfully making Pearl both a sympathetic and believably scary person.
I approach A24 horror films with trepidation: their 'elevated' approach usually means that I'll be bored and irritated by what I see. Ti West's X, however, was a reasonably entertaining movie -- a little slow and underwhelming to begin with but picking up for a very enjoyable second half.
Pearl, the prequel to X, is also slow burn, as one might expect from West, and it is very different in tone to his previous movie, but it's also one of A24's better films thanks to a standout performance from Mia Goth, who makes the film's titular character so much more than a one-dimensional movie psycho.
Pearl is a complex character, deeply troubled but well aware of the fact that she is somehow different to most people; she desperately wants to fit in, to be loved, to have the perfect life that she sees others enjoying, but it is not to be -- her insanity, anger and violence is barely restrained. Her mother sees what Pearl is capable of and tries to keep her daughter under control, but ultimately even she cannot stop the inevitable from happening.
Not exactly a horror film, although horrific and bloody things do happen, Pearl is more of a character study, in which the character in question is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Goth is extremely impressive, particularly in the scene where she confesses her sins to her soon-to-be-dead sister-in-law Mitsi (Emma Jenkins-Purro). Even if the film isn't to your liking in terms of style, it's hard to deny that its star is anything less than superb, successfully making Pearl both a sympathetic and believably scary person.