Pearl cements Mia Goth’s place as a true horror icon

polygon.com:

Polygon has a team on the ground at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, reporting on the horror, comedy, drama, and action movies meant to dominate the cinematic conversation as we head into awards season. This review was published in conjunction with the film’s TIFF premiere.

When horror writer-director Ti West premiered his gory period slasher X at SXSW in March 2022, it came with a surprise reveal: an end-credits trailer for a prequel, Pearl, which would fill in the backstory of X’s ruthless main villain. For Pearl’s North Americanpremiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, West pulled a similar trick, with a teaser and announcement for a third film, MaXXXine, as a sequel to X. Where X is an ode to 1970s-style raw, grainy independent horror movies, West says MaXXXine will be inspired by the ’80s VHS boom — which the tracking lines, color glitches, and synth score on the MaXXXine teaser certainly underline.

That leaves Pearl as the middle movie in a trilogy (so far, at least), and also as the series’ biggest outlier. With stronger visuals than X, a phenomenal and ambitious performance from Mia Goth, but also an emptier and more meandering plot, Pearl loses the fun parts of Ti West’s pastiche. At the same time, it still delivers plenty of thrills and killer moments. It’s both a vividly painted nightmare and a showcase for its star.

X is firmly set during the independent filmmaking boom of the 1970s, as an homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, as seen through the eyes of the porn industry. Mia Goth is stellar, pulling double duty as both final girl Maxine and as Pearl, the killer who comes after her. X has plenty of laughs, gory kills, inventive editing, and even some poignant