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Please don’t talk to me about the death of creative, well-made cinema. It’s still alive. You have to look for it. A great place to start is genre films, particularly horror. Horror films provide some of the most exciting, inventive filmmakers at work today. Filmmakers like Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, Jennifer Kent, Zach Cregger, and James Wan, and you can also add the director of X and Pearl Ti West to that list. Like great filmmakers before him, Ti West is inspired by the past and pays homage, but also adds his distinct flavor to the proceedings. Both are worth checking out if you enjoy off-the-beaten-path slow-burn horror.
The first film of the two is X, set in 1979 on the shoot of a porn film following the cast and crew who are making it. These include Wayne, the director (Martin Henderson), his aspiring porn star actress girlfriend Maxine (Mia Goth), fellow actors Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow), Jackson (Scott Mescudi), amateur director RJ (Owen Campbell), and RJ’s girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega). The central drama between the crew revolves around the morality of porno filmmaking. They want to bring art to the porn industry (recalling Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights) and set out to a farm called The Farmer’s Daughters, owned by an elderly couple named Howard and Pearl. Lorraine especially does not approve of what they do. She only goes along because her boyfriend RJ thinks it’ll be a good introduction for his aspiring cinematic talents. Lorraine, however, ends up getting manipulated into participating. Things start to go wrong, and something is wrong with the older lady Pearl. They start dying one by one, and it’s Pearl that’s the one who’s killing them. She’s also mega-horny.
Pearl is a prequel to X and follows a younger Pearl in 1918 during the flu pandemic (shades of modern covid are palpable) growing up on the farm from X with a sick father and an overbearing abusive mother. She has dreams of making it big as a Hollywood actress. Actually, it’s more than just dreams. It’s a sick drive to make it, including murdering anyone in her way. Her husband is away at war, and she often sneaks to the local movie theater to escape her boring life on the farm. She strikes up a flirtatious relationship with the projectionist there. Still, he soon realizes that something is not quite right with Pearl. Pearl tries out for a local dancer in a church group, but she does not get the part. She realizes that she will never live up to her dream and commits to a life of serial killing instead.
On paper, nothing is seemingly original about X and Pearl. The slow burn aspect and attention to detail separate a studio like A24 from others. Regardless, Ti West’s craftsmanship is original, which separates them from your run-of-the-mill films. In both films, there’s a creeping sense of dread. Both films were shot for only a million, but they look and sound first-rate. X is a homage to horror films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Pearl pays homage to Hollywood’s Golden Era with callbacks to The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins. The sound design especially is excellent. Ti West knows when to let a scene play out and when to rampant up the tension. The production design is incredible, and the prosthetics used in X, for instance, are highly persuasive. There’s an undying love for the cinema of Ti West, and something like that makes the whole watching experience a giddy good time.
The performances are all excellent. X is more of an ensemble film than Pearl, focusing solely on Pearl. The supporting work from Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, and Kid Cudi is all first-rate. The star of both films is Mia Goth, who is absolutely incredible. She plays dual roles in X and is in prosthetics as Pearl, and there’s never really an unconvincing moment with her. Pearl is where Mia Goth truly gets to shine as Pearl. She is scary and compelling as fuck. It’s a superb performance that swings for the fences and connects. The fact that she wasn’t nominated for an Oscar shows you that there’s still a pervasive bias against horror films in general by the Academy.
This is a surprise new horror franchise in many ways. Pearl was filmed secretly back to back with X, which was risky considering X could have totally flopped, but I loved the confidence A24 showed in a filmmaker like Ti West, who clearly has a passion for the genre and cinema in general. The portrayal of a serial killer is not necessarily done in a sympathetic way but in a way that makes you understand. In a time where horror films churn out one gem after another, X and Pearl stand out far ahead of the crowd as a funny, scary, original good time. Another film in the X series is currently developing, MaXXXine, and I can’t wait. Mia Goth says it’s the best script of the three.
X – ***1/2 out of ****
Pearl – ***1/2 out of ****
