For those that haven’t seen either of director/writer Ti West’s films from this year, be warned; they are amazing, but hold much gore and some strange body horror. They are horror movies after all.
However, they are my favorite horror films since 2020’s The Invisible Man. They perfectly weave the horrific elements of their environments with the story they are trying to tell; one of a troubled woman, in a few different time periods/stages of her life, and the struggles that she goes through in these eras to become something greater than herself.
X, the original film from earlier this year, depicts a group of young adults renting out a barn to make an adult film. The protagonist, Mia Goth’s Maxine, wants desperately to become a star, and sees this as her avenue.
However, the group doesn’t know that they have stumbled across a murderous woman and her husband, Mia Goth’s Pearl.
Yes, Mia Goth plays primary protagonist and antagonist in the first film. Her performance is stunning in both.
X seems to depict an interplay of violent horror films and their sexually explicit cousins, pornography films. Writer/director Ti West seems to show us that these two genres are not that far away from one another; gore and sex are frequently juxtaposed with one another.
This isn’t a new statement, by any means. But it is miraculously written, directed, and performed in this piece of enjoyable horror media.
Later this year, Pearl was released, again starring Mia Goth as Pearl. However, this movie showed the origins of the monstrous woman we saw in X as a young woman, waiting for her husband to return from the warfront. It shows the troubled mind struggling with wanting to be a star, and in failing to do so, turns to murderous rampage.
In X, the ensemble cast all performed brilliantly, with Jenna Ortega and Mia Goth shining the brightest. However, in Pearl, we see Goth go from an amazing young actress to a tour de force that we should all watch carefully. This leading lady has a career ahead of her. Her manic portrayal of this woman who begins to panic in her distressing domestic captivity is breathtaking, stunning, and horrifying all at once.
These movies are wonderful for adult audiences, and give us names to add to the list of the up-and-comers to watch; along with Evan Peters and Anya Taylor Joy, we now have Jenna Ortega, Mia Goth, and Ti West.