X (2022) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 12

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Excitement and exhilaration are the extra elements of horror on exhibit today.

The film X appears to be a simple slasher film with a number of young people meeting their demise at the hands of a couple of psychotic older folks. But is it actually? There may be more going on than initially meets the eye.

Before Viewing

Now this is more like it. A group of young, aspiring filmmakers travel to a remote farm, (possibly in Texas) to film their movie (possibly a ‘naughty’ picture). There’s a creepy older man who wants some discretion due to his wife not being well. The group gets to filming, but that’s when some weird things start to happen. Like murders and whatnot. This trailer gets into some of the gorier details, but without giving too much away. Welcome back to the last A24 picture for the week: X.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

The film immediately lets you know something is up as a Sheriff (James Gaylyn) and his officers investigate a bloody, rural farm house with signs of a slaughter. The film shifts to 24 hours earlier where strip club owner and entrepreneur Wayne (Martin Henderson) and two dancers, and three other younger folks head out to a farm near Houston, Texas in 1979 to make a low-budget porno. They stop at a gas station to pick up supplies where the first scene with Jackson (Kid Cudi) filling up his gas tank, is filmed.

After passing a semi truck that has hit and eviscerated a cow, the group’s van pulls up at the out of the way farm of elderly Howard (Stephen Ure) and his unseen wife. Howard indicates he doesn’t like the youngsters being here and doesn’t much like Wayne. The group sets up for their first sex scene between Jackson and his sometime girlfriend Bobby-Lynn (Brittany Snow). While the scene is filmed, Wayne’s girlfriend Maxine (Mia Goth) goes for a skinny dip in a local lake, unaware of the alligator, which she avoids none the wiser.

Seeing an older woman, Maxine investigates and is treated to a glass of lemonade. Upon returning to the group, she doesn’t mention the odd encounter. That evening after a performance of “Landslide” by Bobby-Lynn and Jackson, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), the girlfriend of filmmaker RJ (Owen Campbell) and audio recorder on the shoot, decides that she wants to take part in the film. RJ rebuffs her decision, claiming the film can’t change halfway through, but she goes through with it regardless.

Later RJ leaves, upset about Lorraine choosing to act in the dirty movie. As he drives the van past the farm house, an older woman, Pearl (also Mia Goth) stands in his way. When he exits to help her out of the way she fondles him sexually and then repeatedly stabs him in the neck. Lorraine misses RJ and asks Wayne to help her find him. While investigating the barn barefooted, he steps on a nail just before Pearl shoves a pitchfork through his head.

Lorraine sees Howard, who asks for help finding his wife. He’s worried about her. Instead he locks Lorraine in the basement and smashes her hand with the butt of his gun when she tries to escape. Jackson answers the door of the cabin when Howard approaches and with training as a former Marine, goes out with the older man to help. Howard ambushes the younger man, shooting him point blank in the chest with his shotgun. Bobby-Lynn discovers Pearl, naked, on the dock by the lake. The older woman pushes the blonde into the water where she is eaten by an alligator.

Pearl finds Howard at the cabin and the two make love on the bed, which Maxine is hiding under. Maxine makes it to the house and frees Lorraine who is shot as soon as she steps off the porch. Howard pulls her back into the house but has a heart attack. Pearl attempts to shoot Maxine with the shotgun but gets blown off the porch and breaks her hip. Maxine gets in the couple’s old pickup and backs over Pearl’s head, before driving off into the sunrise. The film closes as it opens, with the police discovering a massacre, and a handheld film camera.

“‘Psycho’ is a horror film. And that plot was a MacGuffin to build suspense. And I’m not making that kind of movie.” – RJ

X is unlike any previous A24 films reviewed this week (The Witch, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Saint Maud, Men). It seems less introspective and more like traditional horror films, but it’s really an entirely different sort of horror film altogether. It’s probably fair and appropriate to say that any film produced by A24 Studios is outside the norm. Their movies tend to be considered independent (as opposed to tied to the historic studio system), giving the writers and directors more creative freedom to craft the film they intend. That’s why their films tend to be slightly more intimate and focus on individuals rather than a larger cast. Their horror films also seem to be less about graphic gore, murder, and terror. Instead they focus on horror stemming from real human conditions, such as trauma and grief, with the occasional occult element thrown in. X bucks that trend to a degree, crafting what appears to be a more traditional slasher film. But there’s still that bit of A24 style thrown in for good measure.

This is the first part in a new trilogy of films by writer/director Ti West, whose background in various types of horror films has allowed him to try out lots of different types of tropes within the genre. His credits include writing and directing on films such as Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, The Innkeepers, and a segment in V/H/S, as well as directing episodes of both the Scream and The Exorcist television series. His knowledge and experience with the genre seems appropriate to a film such as X that celebrates the classic slasher format, while also carving new ground (pun intended). He continues the story from here with a prequel called Pearl, which was shot immediately following X, and explores the genesis of the character seen in this film. His next production is MaXXXine, which is a sequel set in Hollywood that follows the survivor of X into another story of horror.

As mentioned above, X pays homage to classic slasher films in a number of ways. The setting for the film, a remote farm in southeast Texas in the late 70s, immediately evokes the setting and tone of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. That film is considered to be the grandfather of the slasher genre which is celebrated in franchises like Friday the 13th and Halloween. Both films contain a group of young people arriving at an out of the way residence, only to discover a creepy family that kills them off, one by one, until only a lone female survivor is left. But West doesn’t stop there. He includes further references to classic films in both imagery and dialogue. The next most obvious reference would have to be Psycho, the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller that introduced Norman Bates to the world, and was the first mainstream slasher-film success.

Lorraine mentions Psycho to RJ as an example to a movie changing it’s plot midway through, obviously referencing switching from a heist film with Marion Crane stealing money, and turning into a horror film with her death at the hands of “mother.” Ti West does something similar by having the young pornographers start making their film, but halfway through changes the direction to a slasher film as Pearl comes for each of them. In addition, West uses several shots that reference Psycho, including a close-up of an eye peering through a wall (Wayne looking through a hole in the barn) referencing Norman Bates’ leering eye through a peephole, and a shot of a partially submerged car in the lake. The car in this film belonged to the last border that stayed at Howard’s ranch, and is shot in a similar way to Norman sinking Marion’s car in the bog behind the motel. West also manages to throw in references to other films, from the mainstream to the obscure. Lorraine smashes a section out the cellar door before sticking her face through the hole, just as Jack Torrance did in The Shining. The killings in the barn with the pitchfork evoke similar moments in Friday The 13th Part III (coming tomorrow). And Bobby-Lynne being consumed by an alligator is most likely a reference to Tobe Hooper’s 1976 thriller Eaten Alive.

At its core, the film is really about Pearl and her issues. When Howard first speaks to the kids, he mentions that they need to be discreet, due to his wife being next door. At the time it seems to be in concern for his wife finding out they’re shooting an adult film, but in hindsight, it’s more of a warning to the youth. Pearl seems like she may have dementia and is housebound, but that may be just some of her loneliness and sadness showing through. Once the killings start, she seems to come alive again. Obviously there’s something in her backstory that gives her the need to have to kill people. After taking RJs life, she stands up and dances in the bloody headlights of the van, celebrating as she might have in her youth. In fact some of the pathos that audiences feel for the character is one of the many elements that West uses to change his film from being a standard slasher film to creating something more unique. Her character is a little bit sad.

X is a film about film. Obviously it references a number of other titles, but it’s also about the characters shooting a film. An exploitation film. A porno. The title of the film refers to the ‘X’ rating that adult films adopted during the 1970s to avoid having to deal with the MPAA. But the ‘X’ in the title also refers to Maxine, and the x-factor star quality that Wayne keeps referring to. Within the group, RJ seems like a serious film student and wants to elevate this sex-film to a higher level of cinema, much like Ti West seems to want to elevate a simple slasher film. RJ talks about elevating the status of the film through his filmmaking, and not doing things the way others have done before. Of course, he is doing the things that others have before, and so does X. It retreads the familiar road of slasher pics, but also creates new avenues, and a new viewpoint of looking at those familiar tropes.

Assorted Musings

• Since the film within a film (the adult film called The Farmer’s Daughter) is being shot on 16mm film, every time footage from that is shown on screen, the aspect ratio of the movie shifts from widescreen to 4:3. Cleverly, the film opens with a 4:3 aspect ratio of the farmhouse, framed from within the doorway of the barn. The camera dollies forward “revealing” the rest of the frame as the darkened barn interior gives way to a full widescreen format.
• Brittany Snow is an accomplished singer, having appeared in all three of the Pitch Perfect films, but is also no stranger to horror, appearing in Would You Rather, reviewed earlier in the month.
• The painting on the side of the Bayou Burlesque building shows an alligator pulling the bikini bottom off a blonde model, mocking the classic advertisement for Coppertone sunscreen, which substitutes a dog pulling the bottoms off a little girl. It also foreshadows Bobby-Lynne’s death by alligator.
• And speaking of foreshadowing…
  • In talking about the porno they’re making, Wayne says, “People’s eyes are gonna pop out of their damn skulls when they see this.” Later, his eyeball pops out of his head when he is stuck with a pitchfork.
  • Jackson, in speaking about his tours in Vietnam says he’s “had enough farmers tryin’ to shoot me for one lifetime.” He is later shot point blank by Howard, a farmer, with a shotgun.
  • When searching for his wife, Howard worries that Pearl will fall and break a hip. After she fires the shotgun at Maxine, the recoil knocks her off the front porch, breaking her hip.