The slasher subgenre includes some of the most compelling horror entries: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Candyman, and the Scream franchise, among others. The audience gets an adrenaline rush when a possible victim runs and hides from the villain and eventually comes out on top. But in many movies, it’s the villain’s backstory that takes the cake, like Tobin Bell‘s iconic Jigsaw in the Saw franchise or Robert Englund‘s Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street.
In contemporary times, Mia Goth’s Pearl in Ti West’s X trilogy is one such villain. Goth is a universally praised actor, but her dual performance in the trilogy spells its own success. The franchise started with X, set in 1979 and follows a group of young filmmakers who rent a rural Texas farmhouse to shoot an adult film. Things take a turn when their elderly hosts catch them, and the shoot turns into a bloody fight for survival. The slasher became a big hit owing to its performance, setting, and a brilliant story by West and Goth.
The success was promptly followed by a prequel, Pearl, which was shot back-to-back with X. Set in 1918 Texas, Pearl acts as a prequel or a psychotic origin story for its titular antagonist as we see her aspiration to become a movie star leading to her committing gruesome violence. Goth garnered award buzz for her disturbing and tragic portrayal. The 93% Rotten Tomatoes-rated feature sees Goth delivering a devastating, unbroken 6-minute monologue and a credit-rolling manic smile that would linger long after the movie ends. It became another success, earning $10 million worldwide. It was followed by MaXXXine, which explored the story of its titular character, who pursues her big break in mainstream Hollywood, but her dark past threatens to catch up with her. Another hit, the feature seamlessly ties back to X, while the overall trilogy gives a heart-wrenching look at ambition, aging, and isolation.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Pearl Is Slashing the Streaming Charts
As the spooky season arrives, fans are revisiting Pearl as it returns to HBO Max’s top 10 global charts, as per FlixPatrol. It stands tall among features like DC’s Supergirl, Halle Berry’s supernatural horror Never Let Go, Paul W. S. Anderson’s In The Lost Lands, Crazy Old Lady, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt’s Interview with The Vampire, and more.
Check out Pearl on HBO Max and stay tuned to Collider for more such updates.
