Director Ti West teamed up with Mia Goth, his star from X (an homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, my review). This one’s set in 1918 on a farm where Pearl lives with her extremely strict mother and ailing father. She fantasizes about becoming a dancer in Hollywood movies, but she turns violent as her dreams are slowly dashed. This film has many of the same attributes of X, primarily that it’s more about an artistic approach than creating suspense. This time the homage is to the Golden Age of movies with a Technicolor shooting style and a continuous underscore to underlay the melodrama. The setting during the Spanish Flu epidemic obviously echoes our recent pandemic. In the title role, Goth goes all out to the point of being obnoxiously unbalanced. The director must be entranced by her charms because he gives her one very long closeup confession and a ridiculously over-the-top grin behind the credits. West seems to enjoy his cinematic tributes, but while they may be a stylistic curiosity, they aren’t remotely suspenseful and even the murders are rather tame. 
(2 / 5)
