I liked X, it was not just another gory horror with scare jumps. It was creepy and unusual, and the horror of it was so real. There was no paranormal, no demons, no curses. The source of the horror was reality itself. And this theme continues in Pearl as well, a deep origins exploration of the disturbed killer from X. And there are few great elements here, no doubt. However they are not truly fulfilled on account that West decided to overkill with Mia's acting skills. I mean, she is a great actress, very brave and impressive in all her movies, and I've seen her first in Nymphomaniac ten years ago. But that was just overkill, too much time focused on theatrics and on really unnecessary stuff, too little was done to write a proper story to reflect who Pearl is. Thus some events seems to happen just randomly without earlier justification, and then the script rushes to justify the reasons after they happened. Not all bad, though, but definitely not as good as X. Hopefully the third part will make up for that.