[FILM]
PEARL
[EDITED BY JOHN NUGENT]
Mia Goth raises the bar as horror-icon-in-the-making Pearl.
★★★★ OUT 17 MARCH / CERT 15 / 101 MINS
DIRECTOR Ti West
CAST Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro, Alistair Sewell
PLOT Texas, 1918. Pearl (Goth) has married a neighbour in the hope of getting away from the family farm and her oppressive mother (Wright) and incapacitated father (Sunderland). But her husband (Sewell) has gone to war, leaving her dreaming of movie stardom. Sometimes, Pearl gets violent.
AUDIENCES FOR TI West’s effective, gruesome retro-shocker X — in which porno filmmakers run into an aged, homicidal farmwife in 1979 — were doubly surprised by the end credits. First, there was the revelation that ‘final girl’ Maxine and pension-age mass murderess Pearl were both played (extraordinarily) by Mia Goth. Then, there was a trailer for a Pearl-centric prequel which West and Goth (who co-wrote Pearl) put together before the first film was released. This might seem presumptuous or ill-advised — like making Joker, but with a newly minted character who hasn’t yet permeated pop culture. Several entries in the Texas Chainsaw franchise (to which X owes a huge, admitted debt) stumble by telling more than anyone cares to know about where Leatherface came from. In the event, Pearl isn’t an exercise in filmmakers doing their own fan fiction but the ambitious, impressive centrepiece in what’s now revealed as a trilogy. The threads will be drawn together next year in