OnScreen Review: "X"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
Director Ti West started to make a name for himself back about a decade ago in the horror genre with The House of the Devil (2009) and The Innkeepers (2011). After a sojourn into doing TV for several shows over the last few years, he has returned to his roots a bit with X, a slow burn horror movie set in the 70s.
The year is 1979 and the film actually opens with a long shot at the location where much of the movie will take place, showing the aftermath of all the violence that is to come. A body, with a sheet draped over it, cover in blood. A porch, with a hatchet sticking into the boards, covered in blood. Inside the house, a TV preacher drones on while the police look at an even grislier scene inside and then find something horrific in the basement that is not revealed to the viewer.
Cutting back to 24 hours earlier, a group of people set out from a seedy strip joint to make an adult film at this remote ranch in a small, rural Texas town. Pearl (Mia Goth) and Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) are the female talent while Jackson (Kid Cudi) is the male talent for this porno they plan to shoot. Wayne (Martin Henderson), the proprietor of the strip club and Pearl’s boyfriend, is the director/producer. Also tagging along on their trip is cameraman RJ (Owen Campbell), who aspires to make a “good” dirty movie (which sounds like it is right out of Boogie Nights), and his girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) who tags along to help with audio. The farm is owned by an old man (Stephen Ure) who is quite standoffish, unpleasant, and quite ugly. He also has a mysterious, old wife (Mia Goth in a dual role). The group stays in a cabin on the property, covertly filming their “good” dirty movie, The Farmer’s Daughter.
X is a horror film about making an adult film; a mashup of sex and violence. In that regard, the first half can be seen as an homage to the adult movies of the 70s (Debbie Does Dallas is name-dropped) while also building up the hint of danger and mounting sense of dread and unease for the second half, where the violence gets unleashed. There has long been a connection between sex and violence/horror in movies, famously pointed out by Randy in Scream, but also horror movies can serve as sexual metaphors, be a punishment for sexuality, or use sexual conventions to subvert and inflict more horror. Generally speaking, when the words ‘gratuitous’ or ‘graphic’ are thrown around in relation to movies, it is often related to nudity or violence. Well, plenty of X falls into the gratuitous and graphic category, and in ways you might not expect or want.
What caught my eye with West’s previous work, particularly with The House of the Devil, is that it was set in the early 80s and had the look and feel of an early 80s horror movie. He does a tremendous job of recreating an aesthetic and that is something that he does to great effect with X, an homage to 70s exploitation flicks like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And for the adult movie they are shooting in the movie, there is a grainy, 16mm look to the footage they are shooting, similar to how some of the on-set filming was shot in Boogie Nights.
As I mentioned previously, the film builds up to the eventual horror that is unleashed upon this group, as something of a slow burn, which I appreciated, but some may find too slow to get to the “good stuff” (the killings). There are also some unsettling moments with the old couple in the movie. While I enjoyed the build and kept anticipating what was going to be the catalyst to set things off, there were some minor nitpicks I had with the movie, mainly with Goth and Ure in heavy makeup as the older couple. There were several instances where it was clear that these were actors who were not as old as their characters and were trying to move as an old person moves. And I could have used a bit more “why” for all that was happening.
Fans of horror should be very satisfied with Ti West’s X. It is an old-school slasher movie in the vein of some of the classic of the 70s and 80s. Some of the content may be a bit too much for some people, but as one of the characters says early on and then has it thrown back in his face later, “When did you become such a prude?”
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars