Pearl

*This article is about the 2022 film, you may be looking for the character of the same name.*

## Pearl

* Poster 1
* Poster 2

### Premiere date

September 3, 2022 (Venice)
September 13, 2022 (TIFF)
September 16, 2022 (United States)

### Written by

Ti West
Mia Goth

### Music by

Tyler Bates
Tim Williams

### Produced by

Ti West
Jacob Jaffke
Kevin Turen
Harrison Kreiss

### Budget

$1 million

***Pearl*** is a 2022 American psychological slasher film directed, produced, and edited by Ti West who co-wrote it with Mia Goth. It is a prequel to *X* and *MaXXXine*. It stars Mia Goth as the titular character. The film serves as the origin of the troubled woman Pearl, who wants nothing more than life off of the farm, an aspiring star ― and she will do anything to achieve stardom.

The film grossed over $9 million domestically received generally positive reviews from critics who lauded Goth's performance and the imaginative and fresh storyline.

## Synopsis

*Filmmaker Ti West returns with another chapter from the twisted world of **X**, in this astonishing follow-up to the year’s most acclaimed horror film. Trapped on her family’s isolated farm, Pearl must tend to her ailing father under the bitter and overbearing watch of her devout mother. Lusting for a glamorous life like she’s seen in the movies, Pearl finds her ambitions, temptations, and repressions all colliding in this stunning, technicolor-inspired origin story of **X**’s iconic villain.*

## Plot

The year is 1918. during the influenza pandemic, Pearl is a young woman living with her German immigrant parents on their Texas homestead while her husband, Howard, serves in World War I. Pearl's father is infirm and paralyzed, and her domineering mother, Ruth, insists that she help care for both him and the farm. Pearl, longing for a more exciting life, is captivated by the films she sees at the local cinema and aspires to become a chorus girl, much to Ruth's disapproval. However, Pearl also shows signs of being a disturbed individual; for example, she kills farm animals and physically abuses her father.

At the movie theater, Pearl meets a young projectionist who takes a liking to her. While riding her bicycle home, Pearl stops along a cornfield and begins dancing with a scarecrow, fantasizing about the projectionist, and masturbates with it. When her mother realizes that eight cents are missing from an errand Pearl did, Pearl is berated about being careless and has her supper withheld.

Pearl's affluent sister-in-law, Mitsy, tells her of an audition being held to find new dancers for a traveling troupe, which Pearl envisions as a way out of her circumstance. She later sneaks out of the house at night and visits the projectionist, who shows her *A Free Ride*, an illicit stag film he acquired in France. He encourages Pearl to pursue her dreams. Pearl comments that she cannot abandon her family, and that she wishes "they would just die."

When Ruth finds a program Pearl took from the movie theater, the two get into a fierce argument over dinner. A physical altercation erupts, during which Pearl shoves her mother against the kitchen hearth, igniting her dress and resulting in Ruth suffering life-threatening burns. Pearl drags Ruth into the basement and leaves her father seated in the kitchen. She flees to the movie theater, where she has sex with the projectionist.

In the morning, the projectionist drives Pearl back to the farm so she can prepare for the audition. He is perturbed by a now maggot-infested roasted pig Mitsy's mother left for Ruth the day prior, and by inconsistencies Pearl has told him, as well as by her theatrical behavior. When he attempts to leave, Pearl flies into a fit of rage at his abandonment of her, and stabs him to death with a pitchfork before pushing his car—with his corpse in it—into a pond, where an alligator she has nicknamed Theda eats his remains. Pearl dresses herself in one of Ruth's lavish gowns, and dresses up her father before smothering him to death.

Pearl arrives at the church where the audition is being held. She gives a dance performance she feels will win over the talent scouts, but is devastated when she is rejected for not being young, blonde, or "all-American". Mitsy accompanies her home in an attempt to console her. In the kitchen, Pearl makes a lengthy confession to Mitsy about her resentment toward Howard, who came from a privileged background but insisted that the couple remain on her family's farm, and admits she was relieved when she miscarried his child. She further confesses her feelings of alienation and insecurity, her joy in acts of harm, and to taking the lives of her parents and the projectionist. Pearl then manipulates a stunned Mitsy into confessing that she won the audition over Pearl. Jealous that Mitsy won the audition, Pearl chases her down the driveway and kills her with an axe.

Pearl dismembers Mitsy's body and feeds her corpse to Theda, before going into the basement and lying with a deceased Ruth. Concluding that her mother was correct and that Pearl should "make the best of what she has", she decides to remediate her wrongdoings by creating a comfortable home for Howard when he returns from the war. The next morning, Howard arrives unexpectedly. In the kitchen, he is horrified to find the bodies of Pearl's parents seated at the dining table around the rotting pig. Pearl greets him with a protracted, pained smile.

## Cast

* Mia Goth as Pearl
* Alistair Sewell as Howard
* Emma Jenkins-Purro as Mitsy
* David Corenswet as The Projectionist
* Matthew Sunderland as Pearl's Father
* Tandi Wright as Ruth

## Trivia

* Pearl's climactic monologue goes for 7 minutes 57 seconds, consists of seventeen shots, and the last shot goes for 5 minutes 36 seconds.
* Tandi Wright, who plays Pearl's mother, was the intimacy coordinator on X (2022) and was offered the role of Ruth as the shoot on the first film was wrapping up. According to Ti West, she learned German for the role in a hurry and became so convincing in her accent that she fooled two German members of the crew.
* Ti West and Mia Goth collaborated on the script via FaceTime during a mandatory 2-week quarantine (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) in New Zealand prior to filming X (2022). They had only hoped A24 would agree to make the film. Fortunately, the project was green-lit before filming began on X.
* Secretly filmed simultaneously with X (2022). 'Pearl' serves as that film's prequel, showing the title character's early life in 1918, decades before the events of 'X'.
* To prepare for the tone of this movie, director/co-writer Ti West suggested that Mia Goth (Pearl) watch What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).
* The pornographic film shown to Pearl is A Free Ride (1915), a real vintage 'stag' film. The film's production is the subject of some debate: It surfaced in the 1970s and was at one point sold by a shady distributor as a hardcore D.W. Griffith from 1915, while silent film historian Kevin Brownlow has posited that it was made in the early 1920s.
* First screenwriting and producing credits for lead actor Mia Goth.
* A teaser for the sequel to "X" (2022) was shown at the end of the credits in some territories, titled "MaXXXine". The sequel will be set in the 1980s.
* According to Ti West, the homeowners of the house the film is set in enjoyed the makeover of the house and barn that production gave so much that they presumably have not changed it.
* Originally meant to be filmed in black and white, but A24 were against it, so it was made in extremely vivid color. Mia Goth claims another reason for the switch from black and white to bright colors was that the team felt like films being made in that way had "become its own thing", and she and Ti West wanted to do something "different and unique".
* Pearl's alligator is named Theda after Theda Bara, who was an American silent film actress, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Viewers may notice a poster of Theda Bara is displayed on the exterior of the picture house that Pearl regularly frequents.
* A trailer was shown at the end of theatrical screenings of X (2022) in certain territories.
* The screenplay spawned from Mia Goth and Ti West doing character prep for the older version of Pearl seen in X, which had become a full-length script.
* Due to various bootlegged clips of the film surfacing online, A24 had taken it upon themselves to simply post these short clips on their TikTok account, most notably, Pearl's argument with the Projectionist and Pearl wailing "I'm a star!" upon rejection at the audition.
* The production team had around 50 swatches of red in order to get the bright color of the barn perfect.
* Online, fans of the film often lovingly call it "Joker for girls", because of how some of the female fans find Pearl relatable, similarly to how some male fans of the 2019 film relate to the titular character.
* Pearl, a movie buff, has named her "pet" alligator Theda. The marquee of the theater in town indicates it is showing the 1917 production of "Cleopatra," with Theda Bara in the starring role.
* With the release of the first publicity poster, it was announced that West would once again serve as film editor alongside his other production roles, that Eliot Rockett would return as cinematographer, and that Tyler Bates and Tim Williams would serve as co-composers of the film's score.