Pearl, 2022.
Directed by Ti West.
Starring Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Alistair Sewell, and Emma Jenkins-Purro.
SYNOPSIS:
In 1918, a young woman on the brink of madness pursues stardom in a desperate attempt to escape the drudgery, isolation, and lovelessness of life on her parents’ farm.
It’s almost unhealthy how much I enjoyed revisiting Pearl on 4K and realising just how brazenly Ti West leans into the look and feel of classic Hollywood while letting something far darker fester beneath the surface. Where X paid homage to grindhouse slashers and sun-bleached exploitation cinema, Pearl veers off in an entirely different direction, presenting the origin story of its ageing killer as a lush Technicolor melodrama in full, florid bloom. Seeing that aesthetic restored with such care on Second Sight’s new UHD release only heightens the strangeness of it. The film looks as though it escaped from the late 1930s, only to stab its way through the countryside.
Set in 1918 during the influenza pandemic, the film pulls us back to the farmstead where X would later unfold. Pearl, played with astonishing commitment by Mia Goth, is a young woman trapped in a life shrinking around her. Her husband is at war. Her father is paralysed and entirely dependent. Her mother, stern and exhausted, regards Pearl’s every hope with suspicion. In the middle of this bleak domestic grind lies a dream: the possibility of becoming a dancer, a fantasy stoked by grainy newsreels and the flattering attention of a projectionist in town.
West’s brightest flourish is the way he folds the fantasy directly into the form. The film’s colour palette is aggressively saturated, as if someone has wrung the last drops of sunlight from a lost Douglas Sirk production. Fields glow green, skies blaze blue, and Pearl’s dresses practically sing from the screen. On this 4K release, the effect is startling. The Dolby Vision grade gives those hues a heat and intensity that pushes the film into the realm of fairy tale, even as its plot steepens into a psychological tragedy.
Amid all this visual splendour, Goth delivers a powerhouse turn that anchors every frame. Her performance is tender, wounded, frightening and heartbreakingly open. Pearl may be a murderer in the making, but Pearl finds the aching vulnerability that drives her. She wants to be seen. She wants to be valued. She wants her life to matter. Goth charts every crack in Pearl’s psyche with unnerving delicacy. The now-famous monologue, delivered almost entirely in one take, is the film’s emotional nucleus and a confession that dissolves into a howl of longing and self-delusion. It is one of the finest pieces of screen acting I have seen.
As a horror film, Pearl is unusual. The murders are fewer than the trailers might suggest, each one erupting not as a genre requirement but as an outgrowth of Pearl’s despair. West resists the temptation to build set-pieces. Instead, he lets the character’s unraveling drive the violence, producing a quiet tension that rarely releases into spectacle. The result sits somewhere between grand melodrama and psychological thriller. Horror fans hungry for a bloodbath may find it subdued, but the restraint is purposeful.
Turning to the 4K disc, Second Sight’s presentation is superb. The image is clean, sharp and vibrantly alive. The colour grading, always central to the film’s design, is handled with exceptional care. Reds pulse with heat, greens thrum with life, and the deep blacks of the farmhouse interiors carry a richness that suits the film’s gothic undertow. The Dolby Atmos track adds scale to the orchestral score, letting those sweeping strings fill the room while highlighting smaller sonic cues with surprising intimacy.
The supplements are generous. New interviews with West, Mia Goth’s co-stars, production designer Tom Hammock and cinematographer Eliot Rockett give proper insight into the film’s construction. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ commentary is dense with analysis, while the short legacy features offer lighter behind-the-scenes glimpses. As a full package, it outstrips the previous A24 release with ease.
Pearl remains a bold, beautifully crafted character study that dares to blend old Hollywood glamour with the horror of a mind collapsing in on itself. On 4K, that blend feels richer than ever. It remains one of the most beautiful and unexpectedly brilliant films I have ever seen.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Tom Atkinson
