I didn’t really like director Ti West’s farm set slasher thriller X. I couldn’t fault it but where I think they were going for sex positivity, I just found it a bit seedy. It was interesting that the killer in it was an old woman rather than a brutish man or a femme fatale figure, a schizOAP as it were, although this also fed into some uncomfortable tropes around childless females becoming monsters. I am sure the film was exactly what they’d intended for it to be but wasn’t really my thing.

At the end though they dropped a trailer for an already shot prequel that no one was expecting; a story of how the psychopathic pensioner had become the unhinged maniac we’d just seen on the screen. What was promised here was an apparent portrait of this woman in her twenties, desperate to escape her oppressive upbringing and inspired to be more by cinema itself. This shared themes with X as the protagonist there is making porn films as a pathway to acting in mainstream movies and, as revealed at the end, has broken away from her own restrictive home life. This time though cinema looked to be a more explicit influence in the story. Also, Mia Goth who played both the final girl Maxine and the octogenarian murderer in X, looked to be giving a very full on performance in this one.

Having now seen the full movie, some of this is realised and some not. Goth, as the younger version of the old woman who this film takes its name from, is excellent. She shows all the traits of female psychopathy – sensitivity to how she is perceived, cunning, perceived victimhood, a lack of arrogance, irresponsibility and skewed rationality, that are not typical of men with the same diagnosis – that real world psychology/Google tells us to be true. She also has an alarming tendency to kill things with sharp objects which Hollywood would have us believe is a common symptom of this psychosis as well. All of this is ramped up to the absolute limit and it is a massively engaging performance.

The cinema references are not as strongly realised as I’d anticipated but there is fun to be had here too. The only actual film that is explicitly included is one related to a very specific type of cinema that I am not at all au fait with (I promise I’m not) but the influence of both Hitchcock and The Wizard of Oz are keenly felt (although when Dorothy and Pearl come across a scarecrow it is quite a different thing). There is also a Busby Berkeley style dance fantasy and some significant scenes in a projection booth but this certainly isn’t The Artist or Cinema Paradiso either.

Mostly the film is about Pearl’s strained relationship with her parents and the actions this pushes her into. It doesn’t actually show what made her a murderous nutjob, as she is already certifiable by the time the film starts, but in retrospect I think I preferred it this way because this condition does indeed generally originate in childhood and the last thing I wanted to see was a 1940s female version of Joker.

Pearl may not be quite what I’d hoped for but I do have to say that it made X better for me. It deepened the events of that film and gave some key moments significance that I thought they lacked first time around. What I’d have loved is if they’d actually mixed them in together as one movie. I admired Pearl more than I enjoyed it but as with its predecessor, if you like this sort of film then this is a strong example of the genre. There is certainly a close up decapitation shot that I am sure is going to stay with me for a long time so it’s at least given me that, and this is a great showcase for Mia Goth. She, like this film, is not subtle but she, like this film, is quite unforgettable.

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The Ripley Factor:

Remarkably the character of Pearl avoids cliche. Even though the character is younger and sexually charged she still isn’t a typical femme fatale and unlike in X Mia Goth is not overly objectified. You could also argue that the whole story is a quest for agency.

Pearl is a woman who has done what is expected and married a man to secure her future but patriarchy is demonstrably portrayed as weak and dysfunctional and her husband most certainly exists to serve her and not the other way around, this is a theme that carries on into X. He thinks he is controlling her in that film but this one shows that to have always been a fallacy.