Pearl

This demented, charming, Wizard of Oz-like horror is all the more disturbing because it doesn’t look like a horror movie.

Pearl wants so badly to be a star. Part of the film’s pleasure lies in realising that Goth already is.

Goth is riotously entertaining throughout, but two specific scenes, in both of which the camera rests solely on her face for an extended shot, capture the full force of her unnerving talent.

She slashes, stabs and decapitates aplenty, and proves a dab hand with a pitchfork. That’s essentially the film. It’s Judy Garland goes rogue on a farm.

Pearl’s torment is believable largely because Goth single-handedly wills it to be. Her commitment to every choked cry for attention, to every glassy-eyed departure from reality, is unimpeachable.

From the opening credits with their cursive retro font to the end crawl that plays over Goth making a deranged face, the film harks back to vintage B-movies about crazed young ladies...

My favorite part of the X films is their strong aesthetic vision, and Pearl is no exception—drawing on the appearance of early Technicolor and the melodrama of Douglas Sirk films, it's a delightfully campy pastiche.

While I wasn’t blown away by Pearl, I still had a good time and got pretty much what I wanted from it: a deeper understanding of one of the most interesting new horror villains.

Ti West returns to the X film series with his prequel Pearl, a stylish but uneven snapshot of a young woman’s descent into madness.

West and Goth beautifully translate the chilling dichotomy between good and evil with several allusions to The Wizard of Oz, as well as a general nod to the saccharine quality of old Disney films.