Ti West returns with a prequel to his minor horror hit from last year, X and Mia Goth is also back as the title character, and this time she has co-wrote the screenplay with West. It is set in 1918 during the influenza pandemic and the first world war. Pearl is a young woman living in Texas with her parents whilst her husband Howard fights in the war. Pearl, longing for a more exciting life, is captivated by the films she sees at the local cinema and aspires to become a chorus girl.
I was mostly impressed by X, though I thought it started better than it ended. Pearl has the opposite problem. As West and Goth establish the basis of Pearl’s mental instability, the story is very sluggish to start with, only really sustained by Goth’s unhinged performance. It picks up when Pearl inevitably snaps, though the shock of her doing that and the gory nature of it would have had more of an impact if we had not already seen Pearl’s true nature in X. Towards the end of the film, there is an excellent and effective monologue by Goth in the presence of her sister in law, Mitzy, played by the impressive Emma Jenkins-Purro.
It is beautifully shot by Eliot Rockett, giving it an old-fashioned cinemascope look, and has a lush score Tyler Bates and Tim Williams. It does leave open the question of why Howard went along with Pearl’s murderous ways, though that may be answered in MaXXXine, the sequel to X that is coming soon.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10