As a film fan, film studies lecturer and reviewer, it is not very often that I turn to the person next to me in the cinema (my son on this occasion) and say, “That was one of the best films I have ever seen,” but this did happen just last night. The cold morning air may have dampened my excitement, but I can still say, hand on heart, that Ti West’s prequel to last year’s X, Pearl (A24), is one of the finest horror films in many a year. The monster of X, the wrinkled hag, who we last saw chopping and stabbing her way through the cast and crew of a 1979 porno shoot who happened to be using her farm as a location, clearly had an axe to grind (pun very much intended). Pearl, set in 1918, takes a slowly paced journey through the killer’s youth to find out why she hates these ’70s young folk so ...