Pearl

Mia Goth delivers an impressive but somewhat misguided performance as the title character in this origin story for the main antagonist of Ti West's X. The movie is reasonably entertaining and intermittently funny. The imagery is sometimes gross; but the movie is never scary or horrifying because it fails to provide a convincing explanation for Pearl's pathology. Goth switches from "aw shucks" naive to calculating to deranged. Is she a cunning psychopath motivated by narcissism, envy and rage? Or is she an otherwise decent person spiraling into psychotic delusions? She seems to be neither and both at any given moment. Properly explored, either option would be chilling; but muddling them together make for a frustratingly inconsistent character. She's unpredictable but she's not realistic enough to be compelling.