While WWI rages on in Europe, back in Texas on a small family farm, Pearl (Mia Goth) toils away at her chores while dreaming of leaving the dusty life behind her. When her sister-in-law, Misty (Emma Jenkins-Purro) tells her about auditions for a holiday dance troupe sponsored by the church, the two make secret plans to go and audition. Her mother (Tandi Wright), a strict and religious woman, has grown weary of Pearl’s dreams of escape and chastises her daughter for her lustful inclinations. After a history of this abuse, and with the prospect of her husband, Howard (Alistair Sewell), never returning from war, Pearl takes matters into her own hand to secure the life she feels she deserves. 

Ti West reteams with his muse-apparent Mia Goth and A24 after the success of X earlier this year for a prequel the delves into Pearl’s history. Whereas X pulls inspiration from the films of the 1970s, Pearl finds its aesthetic in the early technicolor classic musicals – works, most typically, of escapism. While Pearl has dreams of one day gracing the silver screen to sing and dance her way into the hearts of millions, Pearl does not contain that same fantastic sense of whimsy and wonder, instead focusing on dread. 

At the front of the film and co-writing the script with West, is Mia Goth in the title role, a reprisal, of sorts, from the character she played in X, albeit with less time in the makeup chair on this go-around. Occupying almost every scene in the film, Goth is the glue that holds this bloated and unfocused narrative together. At 102 minutes, Pearl struggles under the weight of a slow and plodding first act. Much like Orphan: First Kill (2022) from earlier in the summer, Pearl has very little new to say. We do not learn any pertinent details that were not already conveyed in X, and this exploration of Peral’s desires ultimately leads nowhere as the script does not answer or explore many of the questions and themes it presents in any meaningful way. Pearl’s desire for fame and her jealousy of those who live the life she wanted is already known as it is her entire arc as the villain of the first film, and while we see an inclination towards violence here, it almost seems that the story has started too far back to provide much in the way of interest or greater context towards how the Pearl of X came to be.   

When it comes to violence, however, Pearl is also much more subdued than its predecessor with the kills few and far between, and many of them are not nearly as visceral as audiences are anticipating. It opens with the promise of a bloody affair as Pearl dispatches a pestering goose and feeds it to the local gator, but then the film enters into an extended lull while it drives the point that Peral is not happy in her country life. At about the halfway point, over a heated argument at the dinner table, Pearl’s mother lashes out at the daughter for her selfishness at wanting to leave the family to rot and the altercation finally brings some life to the narrative. It marks the turning point for Pearl who will become more daring, cunning, and violent in the scenes that follow as she makes the moves necessary, whatever the cost, to secure a life in the pictures.  

In that later half, Pearl grows more vocal and violent as she lets her resentment towards her mother grow and explode, and her anxiety and fears begin to consume her leading her to destroy the world she knows. For all of the plotting and lore crafting that occurs in the first half of the film, the second half just goes through the motions as Peral begins to dispatch of everyone around her. There is a much more interesting approach to this story of a woman consumed by her own fantasies and in a panic destroys everything around her, but Pearl sticks to the surface-level examination and delivers a pale and plain character study, instead. It is the most frustrating aspect of the film as the intention is clearly there on the page, but so much of it is abandoned just as soon as it starts picking up steam. The narrative is in a constant state of teasing the audience, but when it is time to deliver, West and Goth retreat. 

Pearl continues West’s examination of sex and society. In X, he followed a young film producer who wanted to mix the world of art-house and porno, and in Pearl, there is a projectionist (David Corenswet) who reopens the debate. In the almost five decades that would pass between the timelines of the two films, not much has changed. Despite its wider acceptance during the 70s, the prudish mentality is still very much a present antagonist against sex workers. A huge factor of the older Pearl’s rage is that she wants to be held by her husband and feel beautiful again, but his ailing heart cannot allow for that. Again, she is trapped. In Pearl she is able to more freely explore her desire, and with Howard at war and the projectionist promising her a ticket out of the dry, dirty Texas town, it is surprising how little Pearl has to say on the matter of lust, love, and desire. It presents the briefest of moral dilemmas as Pearl grows closer to the handsome theatre operator, her obligation to her husband and her religious upbringing making way for the slightest feeling of guilt, but the conclusion of this arc is Pearl’s own obsessive behavior, divorced from the themes of sex and religion that so greatly inspired X, and by extension, this first chapter as well. 

In its final throws, Pearl delivers a minutes-long monologue to Misty about her deepest and darkest thoughts, and Goth is able to show off some incredible work as she spells out the events of the film as if it was somehow a deep and concealed mystery to how she was acting. Again, West shies away from exploring the interesting dynamic of Pearl feeling stuck with Howard deployed and growing resentful of him and her mother feeling stuck taking care of her ill husband (Matthew Sunderland) but doing so out of duty, love, and respect. The purpose of Pearl is to explain how and why she acted the way she did in X, and it would give West an opportunity to correct the ick of having elderly people be the gross, scary, and, disgusting monsters of his story simply because they are old. To argue in good faith, X was really trying to say there is horror in living an unfulfilled life, realizing it all too late, but as with West’s blunt handling of metaphor in Pearl, it does not come across quite so clearly and gives way to this troublesome interpretation. Instead, the film reveals that Pearl is just a vapid brat of a child. There are breadcrumbs of intention sprinkled throughout that support the idea of a deeper and more profound message, but as presented Pearl is a failed attempt to state clearly its thesis and lend credence to Pearl being a misunderstood villain. 

Unable to leave well enough alone, West and Goth will return to the world of X once more, with the recently announced MaXXXine (2024), picking up some years after the events of X. Hopefully the pair can find more success in moving the story forward instead of backfilling, but it is understandable for audiences to approach this teased third installment with apprehension seeing the drastic drop in the quality of the storytelling in Pearl. It is still a handsomely made film with a nice use of color and score, but it is so obvious and clunky in its narrative as it scratches at interesting concepts only to quickly abandon them like the subplot revolving around the Spanish flu, a clear comparison to the current state of affairs with Covid-19, but with no real purpose other than helping it be more easily recognizable as a social commentary. The film does have some good narrative ideas, but they are delivered so bluntly that it quickly becomes a chore to sit through and does not have the same pop and power as X to stick the landing. To just judge the film on its own merit does add a little bit since it does not have anything to live up to, but it is clearly not meant to exist in a vacuum, separated from this larger story, and as such it is really hard to call this film a success.