Earlier this year, director Ti West returned to his indie film roots with the surprise slasher hit “X,” an homage to the grindhouse exploitation films of the sleazy 1970s about a van full of free-love leftovers shooting an adult film in a cabin owned by a couple of a deranged elderly Texans. This brutal little genre exercise reminded the fans of West’s previous features of what he could achieve with a smaller budget. But we weren’t prepared for studio A24 to release his follow-up “Pearl” only a few months later — the supposed second in a trilogy of horror films starring Mia Goth.

Goth played both the final girl Maxine in “X,” as well as the aged killer Pearl. Here, she returns as a younger Pearl, the lovelorn farmer’s daughter, now set in 1918. While her husband Howard (Alister Sewell) is fighting for his country in the first World War, news of the Spanish flu spreads across America. Meanwhile, our protagonist lives with her parents, where she works with the livestock, feeds the crocodile in the swamp behind the house, and takes care of her fully paralyzed, wheelchair-bound father (Matthew Sunderland).

Pearl dreams of a better, more exotic life as a dancer in Europe, but she keeps her head down and her desires silenced so as not to disappoint or anger her disciplinary mother (Tandi Wright). Her curiosity becomes overwhelming after meeting a flirty projectionist at the local movie house. Now, with stars in her eyes and lust in her heart, her sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) informs her of a dance audition for a touring chorus line.

Fans of West’s previous work have no idea what they are in store for with “Pearl.” His previous films evoked the tonal qualities of genre-specific horror movies, but his approach here is much more playful and exuberant. This is a horror film that doesn’t rely on moody lighting or other aesthetic signifiers to telegraph its scares, often avoiding the common editing tendencies of traditional horror set pieces. In place of creepy set dressing and serious music stings, West presents us with the type of technicolor fantasia of idyllic Americana and countryside décor that one might associate with a stage production of “Oklahoma.”

Bright red barns, blue skies, and green pastoral fields splash across the imagery in bold primary simplicity. When this is then juxtaposed with sudden acts of violence, dismemberment, and southern gothic melodrama, Pearl’s psychological duality stabs with sharper satire.

Mia Goth is credited as a co-writer on this project, and for all the movie’s genre-bending and broad displays of visual flourish, the story always serves to showcase the emotional reality of the character and her demented transition. Goth straddles the role between child-like innocence and the darker nuanced just below Pearl’s repressed surface, all while remaining in harmony with the film’s arch tone and intentional artifice. We see her dance, we see her cry, and we watch the dissociated torment that’s left when she believes that she doesn’t have any dignity worth protecting. This role will likely remain a touchstone for Goth in what is hopefully a long and varied career going forward.

I could spend all day talking about the film’s “Wizard of Oz” references, the traces of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” Brian De Palma’s similarly gauzy suburban fairytale “Carrie,” and the subtle nodes of John Water’s grotesque use of Hollywood camp as a means of social critique. What unifies these influences is the precision of an authorial vision and the confidence of a narratively driven style. “Pearl” serves as both a celebration of cinema as a means of escape, as well as a warning about losing your identity in the romance of that illusion

Grade: A

Cassidy Robinson is a former Idaho State University student with a master’s degree in film studies from Orange County’s Chapman University. He is currently working as a media journalist in Los Angeles, California.