Daily Times

I’m gonna be a star. One day everyone’s gonna know my name…” It’s a line that anyone who’s seen last year’s horror hit X will remember – the same line repeated by Mia Goth across two incredible films and three stand-out roles. First playing a wannabe porn star in Ti West’s ’70s-set art house slasher, as well as the elderly serial killer who stabs a rake through all of her friends, Goth returns here in the film’s prequel as the younger version of the same murderer. Pearl opens on that same creepy barn from X, in the same field. Shot in glorious Technicolor with a loving eye for classic cinema setups, West’s new film nods to the early days of Hollywood while swinging an axe through all of its touchpoints. If this is The Wizard Of Oz, Pearl is what happens to Dorothy when she doesn’t get to leave the farm. Half an hour in, she’s fucking the scarecrow… This is 1918, and the Spanish Flu epidemic is forcing everyone behind a face mask as the world lives out the last brutal days of WW1.