X (2022)
a review by Evan Landon
Upon watching the second entry in the very first V/H/S movie, I forgot how good Ti West actually got as a writer/director. If you ever need a reminder, just circle back to that incoherent, uninteresting mess. We all got to start somewhere, huh?
X is a movie that is difficult to really describe, but I will give it a shot: set in the 70's, six individuals wish to make “elevated pornography” like Behind The Green Door, so they travel out to a barn in rural Texas to film, which the setting is a direct homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What ensues is a parable, of types. I say that because there are a lot of religious overtones that continue throughout this trilogy. In fact, you could say it all culminates with that at the end of MaXXXine, but I will get to that one soon enough.
There is a subgenre on full display in this one that is not nearly as popular as it was during the exploitation films of the 70's, dubbed “psycho-biddy”, a polarizing term used to describe the ageism and exploitation of older actresses who were either starlets that had not worked in some time or were never considered to be leading actresses. The film that launched the term was 1962's What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, but it has also been referred to in less attractive terms, such as “hagsploitation”, “Grand Dame Guignol”, even “the Terrifying Older Actress Filicidal Mummy genre” after 1968's The Anniversary.
The actors in this breakout film has got to be one of the most welcomed surprise that nobody was at all expecting. Jenna Ortega was just breaking into her more adult roles and scream queen playing the director's quiet girlfriend, nicknamed “church mouse” by an always entertaining Martin Henderson. Brittany Snow and Kid Cudi do fantastic jobs apiece, but the true star is the double duty Mia Goth wrangles in as both protagonist and antagonist as both adult actress, Maxine, and the geriatric, psychotic owner of the farm, Pearl. Cinematographer Eliot Rockett even won an award along with his colleagues in front of the camera for getting the absolute most out of every single shot, most notably Goth, Ortega, and the film itself.
The production company, A24, certainly knocked it out of the park again with this unexpected hit scoring $15.1 million against a $1 million budget, but it feels like it should be a lot more than that on both sides of that coin. As soon as X made it's mark, immediately making it's money back in it's first week, Ti West revealed that Goth and he had secretly filmed a prequel, Pearl, back-to-back with X to much fanfare. The sky is the limit for everybody involved in this trilogy, and it all started here with X.
If I was going to be overly critical of the film, the problem would be the characters are not fleshed out enough as far as I would have liked, but that is never truly a problem in movies like this. Usually, the characters are just deep enough to know their background and intentions, which is more than a lot of horror films forget: to make you care about those characters.
Every time I watch this one, I always find something new. That is the sign of a great story, but I am not sure the same sentiment could be said about the other two. Since I just finished the trilogy after MaXXXine just released , it looks like we will need to take a gander at those two next. This one is an instant classic, however, in my humble opinion.
4.5 Out Of 5