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A porn crew rent a guest house on a Texas farm in 1979 to shoot a feature, and the elderly couple who own it have opinions.

Ti West gets the texture of the year exactly right: the grain, the zooms, the split diopters, a soundtrack of Blue Öyster Cult and Fleetwood Mac, and an aspect ratio that keeps quoting The Texas Chain Saw Massacre without ever winking.

The idea underneath is better than the slasher on top. Pearl is not a monster because she is old, she is a monster because she wanted the life the young people in her guest house are having and never got it, and the film gives her enough screen time to make that land.

Mia Goth plays both Maxine and Pearl under prosthetics, which was not announced at release and which several critics did not notice.

Followed by Pearl, which is better, and MaXXXine, which is not.