These 3 Horror Films Are the Best Reasons to Go to the Movies Right Now

Ti West has been making effective, slow-burn indie horror for more than a decade. In movies like The Innkeepers and The House of the Devil he’s shown his affection for the mood and aesthetics of classic horror of the 1970s and ’80s (the kinds of movies Gen X’ers discovered on VHS tapes in our youth). Last year’s X, about a porn crew shooting at a remote farm in the ’70s, beset by their marauding hosts, had a young, cool cast and a blowsy, throwback look. It was better than it should have been—a fun, gory time at the movies. X didn’t need a sequel-prequel, but Pearl, opening today in theaters, is a surprise: altogether more substantial than its sibling film, a gothic character study with a wonderfully committed performance by Mia Goth (who co-wrote the script with West).

Pearl is a pastiche–conjuring the romance of Hollywood’s Golden Age even as the bodies pile up. Think of it as The Wizard the Oz meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and if that sounds like an acquired taste, I’d still urge you to give this a try on a big screen, where its vibrant palette and sequences of sun-washed farmland have a painterly appeal. Pearl is resonantly set in 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic—face masks, widespread paranoia—and tells the story of a farm girl (Goth) stranded at home with her controlling mother and paralyzed father while her young husband is off at war. She wants to be a star in Hollywood and nurtures that hopeless dream while she feeds the farm’s geese to an alligator in the pond. Pearl is gonzo, but beautiful to look at, and Goth, who has been around genre films like this for years, but is more charismatic than I’ve ever seen her, carries Pearl on her peasant-dress shoulders. The extended monologue she delivers at the end, after spiraling into a murderous, pitchfork-wielding rage, has to be seen to be believed.

Piggy