Pearl - Turbine Exclusive 4K Ultra HD SteelBook

From our 2022 Blu-ray Review

“I don’t feel… well.”

Pearl (Mia Goth) lives out her days on the family farm with her strict and controlling mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) and her infirm father (Matthew Sunderland). The daughter of German immigrants, she’s stuck under the heel of her mother’s nature as the Great War rages amidst the influenza pandemic. As Pearl waits for news of her husband on the front lines in France, she braves her plague-riddled hometown to pass the time at the pictures steadily feeding her growing delusional fantasy of getting out and making it big in the flicks. And she’ll do anything to make sure her dream comes true. 

They say boredom begets inspiration, and if that’s the case, it worked out brilliantly with Pearl. Due to New Zealand’s two-week quarantine restrictions for incoming travelers, Ti West had a lot of time to kill ahead of filming his surprise horror smash X. Collaborating with star Mia Goth, the pair concocted a distressing and solemn worthwhile prequel story for Pearl. Filmed practically concurrently with X, Pearl proves to not only be a great film, but it’s also a haunting and horrifying experience without replaying any of the same cards found in X. 

Pulling the story back to 1918, the film makes smart use of mask mandates as the influenza pandemic raged on against a beautiful Technicolored backdrop of American youth. Peal parades around much like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz deep in the dreams of a better life elsewhere. Her lone outlet is the pictures where her fantasies grow and inner darkness takes root. West and Goth smartly use the lack of genuine human connection to fuel her growing issues. People are always at an arm's length or further and the few times she actually has any human-to-human contact is cold and inhuman or even tragic. 

Visually, this film is absolutely stunning. Where X enjoyed the gritty neo-realism of the 1970s, Pearl bathes in classic Hollywood artifice. While the story may take place in 1918 pre-dating Hollywood’s golden decade of the 1930s, it pulls from that era’s view of simple Americana living. The themes and motifs are splashed on the screen with brilliant reds, blues, and yellows. This color scheme may be distractingly beautiful, but it also deftly ties back into key moments within X completing Pearl’s journey from a horrible start to a shocking finish. And Mia Goth is phenomenal. 

As much credit is given to Ti West for pulling together this soon-to-be-trilogy, actress and co-writer Mia Goth deserves ample credit. As she’s in virtually every frame of the film, she delivers an incredible performance delving into moments of pure joy coupled with tragic darkness. Much like the first film, Pearl tackles issues of patriarchal sexism. Like any naturally healthy human, Pearl has urges and needs but is deprived of them by the overpowering force of her upbringing and unfortunate geography. Goth brings incredible humanity to this terrifying but tragic character complete with a truly Oscar-worthy near-eight-minute monologue.

As to where this film falls in scale to X, well, I have a tough time ranking the two. They’re distinct cinematic experiences to be sure. Where X has far more humor and shock value, Pearl is more tragic and horrifying. But watching them nearly back to back now as I have, they’re amazingly cohesive. The damnable misery of fortifying my feelings about these movies is the story isn’t done yet. We’ve still got one more to go. My hope now is Ti West and Mia Goth can close this little loop nice and tight with their unexpected trilogy capper MaXXXine reportedly due out sometime in 2023 (now 2024). 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Rural horror has never looked or sounded so lovely with Ti West’s Pearl on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray from Turbine Medien. The 4K is pressed on a BD-66 disc with a Region Free BD-50 for the 1080p version. Both discs are housed in a lovely SteelBook case featuring mat black backgrounds, vivid reds, and metallic highlights. Each disc loads to a language menu option letting you choose either German or English, likewise, whichever language you choose, becomes the default audio.

While Pearl made a splash on 1080p Blu-ray a year ago, the film truly comes to life thanks to a full-fledged 4K Dolby Vision release. Immediately the film’s amazing color pallet picks up many pleasing improvements. Primaries are especially vivid fully achieving that gorgeous Technicolor pallet with perfect red, blue, and yellow saturation. Each color has unique variations and moments to shine throughout this film. Skin tones are spot on and perfectly healthy and natural without being peached or pinked. Details also pick up some extra attention. The film already looked great but I felt like was seeing more fine details in the production design and artwork, clothing textures, and even more detail in skin pigmentation. A robust feast later in the film is a particularly notable visual that’s impressively nauseating. Black levels and whites also see notable improvements lending to some deep inky blacks with excellent shadows. Image depth and dimension are greatly improved in that arena. 

Like the video presentation, the addition of Atmos adds another layer of excellence to this release. While I was satisfied with the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track of the old Blu-ray, I would still hold to that, but this full object-based track is a clear resonant improvement. This little film just sounds and feels bigger now. The added channels and height spacing let key scenes open up. The song and dance number, the perilous thunderstorm, and even quiet scenes in the family barn feel more natural and spacious. LFE for those thunderclaps, fireworks, or the haunting score by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams gives more dynamic to key scenes. Throughout, dialog is clean and clear without issues. Again, just a great example of what we always should have in the first release.

On the bonus features front, we have the same extras ported over with the addition of the film’s German trailer. Which isn’t bad, the Coming Out of Her Shell featurette is pretty solid even at roughly twelve minutes. That said I do wish we had more meaty pieces to gnaw on, but given Ti West is working on the trilogy capper Maxxxine right now, I imagine he’s a tad too busy to lend a hand for new extras.

• Coming Out of Her Shell
• Time After Time
• Teaser Trailer
• USA Trailer
• German Trailer

Tie West and Mia Goth have had a bumper year in 2022 with a crop of excellent horror films. X was a shocking hilarious turn and now with Pearl, we have a hauntingly beautiful and disturbing prequel. While this film certainly seeds scenarios and events seen in X, it stands tall on its own thanks to a sharp script and direction from West with co-writer Mia Goth delivering an incredible performance that was sadly overlooked come awards season. Now all we have to do is wait for that 2024 MaXXXine release date to finish the story! Thanks to Turbine Medien, we have the disc release of Pearl we should have gotten back in 2022. In 4K with Dolby Vision HDR and Atmos audio, this film truly comes to life in vividly horrific and sometimes shockingly funny ways. My lone reservation is I wish there were more bonus features, but that's a relatively small quibble really. If you were wise and held off picking up the earlier Blu-ray or if you need to have this in the 4K collection this is an easy one to call Highly Recommended