Martin Scorsese: A24’s ‘Pearl’ Is So ‘Deeply Disturbing’ That I Had Trouble Falling Asleep Afterward

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Martin Scorsese got a little too scared by Ti West’s “Pearl,” the A24-backed “X” prequel starring Mia Goth. In a review sent to A24 and published by /Film, Scorsese called “Pearl” a “deeply disturbing” horror movie that is “mesmerizing” and “wild.” West and Goth co-wrote the prequel, which world premiered at the Venice Film Festival. “Ti West’s movies have a kind of energy that is so rare these days, powered by a pure, undiluted love for cinema,” Scorsese said. “You feel it in every frame.

A prequel to ‘X’ made in a diametrically opposite cinematic register (think ’50s Scope color melodramas), ‘Pearl’ makes for a wild, mesmerizing, deeply — and I mean deeply — disturbing 102 minutes.

West and his muse and creative partner Mia Goth really know how to toy with their audience… before they plunge the knife into our chests and start twisting.” Scorsese added, “I was enthralled, then disturbed, then so unsettled that I had trouble getting to sleep.

But I couldn’t stop watching.” “Pearl” grossed just over $3 million in its opening weekend. Goth stars as the eponymous young woman living on a remote farm in the early 1990s.