Extreme Horror Sequel Hits Netflix With An Incredible Lead Performance

Pearl is stuck on her family’s farm, caring for her wheelchair-bound father and tending to the animals, all under the watchful gaze of her imperious mother. Her husband is away at war, and she longs for the glamorous life that her picture portrays and an escape from the tedium of her rural existence. But there’s something a little off about Pearl, and as she feeds dead animals to her pet gator, we see the cracks start to emerge and her character increasingly loses her grip on reality as well as her temper.

While it’s not clear whether the setting for Pearl in the 1918 American countryside during the global flu pandemic was informed by the one being experienced by the writers at the time, Mia Goth and Ti West did spend two weeks under quarantine in New Zealand, using facetime to communicate while they were drafting the script.

This environment might have influenced the pandemic references in the film, but the isolation and despair of the influenza epidemic definitely contribute to Pearl’s character. Her obsession with movies as an escape from her lonely world, as well as her increasing delusion, can both be attributed in part to the fear and solitude that an impending pandemic can cause.

The setting for Pearl is based on the romantic, fantastical world of early technicolor film. The idealized, rural farm that Pearl lives on with her family recalls the feel of the beginning of The Wizard of Oz, although the ravenous pet gator and tension-infused family dynamic is more Texas Chainsaw Massacre than Kansas. Building over time, Pearl’s rage over her shattered dreams causes her to obliterate her idyllic, if boring, life in an effort to escape her humble beginnings.

Mia Goth does an excellent job of portraying a slide into madness with a few well-placed red flags planted along the way to signal deeper depravity under the surface. At first, Pearl seems sweet, bored, and maybe a little naive, but Goth’s unique facial expressions and her ability to portray casual cruelty give the character a deliciously warped quality that saves the story from being mundane.

Tandi Wright, who plays Pearl’s mother, Ruth, also does an excellent job of adding dimension to the tale, with a relatable feeling of being trapped herself as she cares for a comatose husband, played by Mattew Sunderland.

REVIEW SCORE

Overall, the film does a good job of creating a dark origin story for the central characters of X and MaXXXine, depicting Pearl’s beginning similarly to the origin story of a comic book villain.

There is both a fantastical feel as well as a relatable element to the story, as you can empathize with Pearl’s frustration while still being terrified by her ruthless behavior. The depiction of the early period of the technicolor genre in Pearl could only have been more perfect if it were a musical.