‘Pearl’ Ending Explained: Does Mia Goth's Killer Heroine Get Caught? (2024)

2024 saw the (seemingly) end of Ti West’s Pearl and Maxine saga with MaXXXine, which follows Maxine (Mia Goth) in the '80s, a few years after the events of X, as she tries to make it as an actress in Hollywood. The past isn't that easy to run from though, as Maxine soon learns, and she finds herself consistently targeted by people who may know too much about her past. Stylistically, it takes on a more Giallo, procedural approach, opting for a more nitty-gritty dive into the seedy underbelly of 1980s Los Angeles and Maxine's climb to fame. However, as much as it seemed like MaXXXine was the end of the trilogy, Ti West may just have more up his sleeve for these characters and the universe they inhabit. But to understand what makes Maxine who she is we must go back to the beginning. Specifically to 1918, when a young Pearl was singing to farm animals and burying down murderous tendencies.

The closing moments of Pearl, the surprise prequel to West's Grindhouse crowd-pleaser X, feel as thematically trapped as the main character of the same name. On one hand, you have this bloody fun experience that’s to be expected from the usual A24 fare; a crazy throwback slasher starring Mia Goth (reprising her role from the previous film) as this wannabe Hollywood golden girl who loves to poke anything with farm hooks. While X makes a case for how the independent scene of the '70s influenced its youth to break from convention, Pearl acts as a bleak inverse to those ideas with the silent film era of World War I serving as this cruel and unattainable chance for escape that can easily drive one towards insanity. The ending to Pearl presents a semi-serious look towards that in a way that may not have the effect the filmmakers were hoping for but nonetheless evokes the feeling of heartache and loss.

Pearl

R

Horror

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Drama

Thriller

In 1918, a young woman on the brink of madness pursues stardom in a desperate attempt to escape the drudgery, isolation, and lovelessness of life on her parents' farm.

Director

Ti West

Cast

Mia Goth , David Corenswet , Tandi Wright , Matthew Sunderland

Runtime

103 minutes

Main Genre

Horror

Writers

Ti West , Mia Goth

'Pearl' Takes a Different Approach Than 'X'

Up until the halfway point of the film, Pearl plays out like a typical technicolor romance film you’d come across on TCM from the '40s or '50s, with Pearl dreaming of a better life outside the one she currently has on her family farm. With the ongoing news of the war as its backdrop, Texas in the year 1918 is filled with paranoia towards any potential illness in the midst of the Spanish Flu (with more COVID imagery than you’d expect from a period film), and Ruth (Tandi Wright), Pearl’s mother, is the most tense of them all. She consistently berates any lollygagging she spots from her daughter, is always worried about any German persecution, and pressures Pearl to follow the same life she’s imbued for herself in caring for Pearl’s disabled father (Matthew Sunderland). But Pearl wishes to be seen and heard by all and wishes to someday be in the pictures that she’s loved her entire life. It’s a fairy tale setup that reminds us of films like The Wizard of Oz and classic Walt Disney films, the difference being that our leading lady is also a narcissistic animal killer. But we’ll get to that shortly.

It’s made clear to the film's audience that Pearl suffers from anxiety due to being an army wife to her husband Howard (Alistair Sewell). She hopes for the same sense of escape he currently has, but also seeks a physical longing for someone who can sweep her off her feet and take her away from her cruel home. This is when she quickly falls for David Corenswet’s character, a theater projectionist, who tells her that the dreams she seeks can come true in Europe. At the same time, Pearl gets word from his sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) that a local church is holding auditions for a dance troupe, which encourages her to finally pursue what she’s been after. Ruth gets word about her daughter’s exploits and demeans her place in this world as nothing more than a caregiver for her husband and family, something that Pearl does not react to kindly. This is when the film takes a much darker turn than expected.

Pearl Reaches a Breaking Point

Pearl and her mother physically argue with each other before she accidentally pushes her to the active fireplace, causing Ruth to catch on fire. Pearl quickly puts out the fire while her father watches in immobile terror. Seeing this as her one-way ticket out of the farm, Pearl hides her badly burned, nearly dead mother in the basement and goes to see the projectionist in hopes that they can run off to the sunset together. By the time he drops her off at the farm so she can get ready for the dance audition, he’s immediately disturbed by the look of the house, spotting spoiled food laid across the floor and rotting pork roast on the porch, to which Pearl thinks nothing of. Pearl quickly catches his disgust and murders him in a fit of rage, feeding Theda, the nearby alligator, his corpse. Before she heads off to the audition, she decides to smother her father to death, now feeling positive that she will get the happy ending she so desires.

Pearl takes Mitsy’s place in line for the audition and performs her routine in a visually captivating sequence, but is bluntly rejected by the judges, seeing as they were looking for someone younger and blonder to take in. This drives Pearl into hysteria, as her ticket to stardom has now been cruelly taken from her and he must now face the reality she’s now responsible for. Mitsy takes Pearl back to the farm, where Pearl confesses to Mitsy everything she’s been wanting to say to Howard since he left for war. Pearl reveals that she was pregnant with Howard’s child when he left, and felt that it was unfair that he got to leave when she couldn’t. She hated him for having the life that she always wanted. Pearl ended up having a miscarriage with the baby and saw it as an opportunity to lash out when things didn’t go her way through killing animals.

She off-handedly admits to several other, human murders, but promises she will make a good home for Howard. Mitsy is obviously shocked by this and tries to politely leave before Pearl asks her if she got accepted to the dance troupe, to which her younger and blonder sister-in-law admits to. Pearl murders Mitsy in response and heads back to the farm to rest with the corpse of her mother, who she claims she still loves. Realizing that this is her fate, Pearl props up the corpses of her parents to reenact one of their normal dinner sessions in the hopes that Howard has something homely to return to. To the surprise of no one, that isn’t the case once Howard returns, who is chilled by the grisly dinner scene and Pearl’s protracted, painful smile.

Pearl Accepts a Life She Does Not Deserve

The ending of Pearl is ultimately a cold one. Putting her murderous tendencies (briefly) aside, Pearl was a girl who shared the same sense of direction and freedom that the crew from X had, but chose to stay due to a mix of fear and guilt over both killing her family and being rejected for being someone that she wasn’t. It begs the question of who’s to blame for the way she acted. Whether it’s the societal prejudices that bogged her down, her own disillusionment, or something else entirely is up for interpretation. Still, it makes for a story that is, in itself, a pre-Hollywood tragedy. Not so much for the people who died, but for the killer herself, who is now forever stuck in the purposeless life that led her to kill in the first place.

Much like X, and MaXXXine, the movie is a character study in a lot of ways. Unlike X , which has multiple other characters populating their world, Pearl is the only true main character we have, and the only one we spend a significant amount of time with, meaning we are constantly inside her head and seeing everything from her perspective. (MaXXXine is a little like this, but not to the same degree.) It doesn't make her actions right, or justified, but it does help us see the slow descent into madness that she eventually falls into by the movie's end. We see every moment that leads to her breaking point. From the constant arguments with her mother and being forced into the role of primary caregiver for her father to Howard being sent off to war when they should be starting their lives together. It's a lot for a young woman to handle, especially in already stressful times. So when she learns of the dance audition, she figures that it is finally her big break and that she is being rewarded for all of her pain and suffering. So when she's rejected, her world quite literally crumbles down around her and sends her spiraling into a murderous fit of rage. Her one chance to make it out, and just as quickly as it was dangled in front of her, it was ripped away.

Pearl may have racked up a sizeable body count throughout the film, but something the movie does well is that it manages to give the audience moments to sympathize with her throughout. Obviously, we don't condone her killing her family, but we can sympathize with her feelings of being trapped in a dead-end town, with no way out. We can sympathize with the fact that her life didn't turn out the way she had hoped, because we've all been there in some way or another. Pearl is a very raw and complicated character, which is what makes these movies such unique and fascinating additions to the horror genre. She's not someone you necessarily want to root for, yet you can't help but feel for her in some ways. She's both a villain and a hero in her own story, one who was ultimately forced to accept a life she didn't feel she deserved.

Pearl is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

WATCH ON NETFLIX