Thirteen years ago, writer/director Ti West did an incredible job of capturing the look and feel of a 1980s horror movie with his film The House of the Devil. Now he has gone back the ‘70s – 1979, to be exact – for his horror movie X... and this one really appealed to me, as it’s part of a sub-genre I love (it’s a slasher) and was clearly drawing inspiration from two ‘70s movie I love, the Tobe Hooper-directed classics The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Eaten Alive.
The story centers on a group of characters who have gone off into the Texas countryside to shoot a pornographic movie. The title on the script is The Farmer’s Daughters, so these Houston residents have to find a farm to shoot on. Their chosen location is the guesthouse on property belonging to the elderly couple Howard and Pearl – played by Stephen Ure and Mia Goth, both of who are buried under some extreme old age makeup. Goth pulls double duty on this movie, as she was also able to ditch the old age makeup (the actress is actually in her twenties) and play one of the pornographers.
The characters we follow onto Howard and Pearl’s property are Goth’s character Maxine Minx, who works at a topless entertainment club called Bayou Burlesque for now, but her main goal in life to become famous like Lynda Carter; Martin Henderson as Maxine’s much older producer boyfriend Wayne; Owen Campbell as director/cameraman RJ, who aims to make this an artistic achievement; Jenna Ortega as RJ’s girlfriend Lorraine, a shy girl who has come along to work sound and hold the boom pole but ends up coming out of her shell in a major way – to RJ’s shock – while spending time with these pornographers; and Brittany Snow and Scott Mescudi as the on-camera talent Bobby-Lynne and Jackson.
While we watch their crew work on their porn movie, complete with nudity that might not be considered gratuitous since it actually is part of the plot here, it also soon becomes clear that there is something very strange about Howard and Pearl. Particularly Pearl, who once has aspirations of being a star herself. Howard and Pearl don’t know what these city slickers are doing on their property, but when Pearl wanders out to the barn and witnesses the filming of a sex scene between Maxine and Jackson, we know things are about to go terribly wrong. And they certainly do.
An opening sequence tipped us off to the fact that Howard and Pearl’s property is going to end up covered in blood and dead bodies within 24 hours of the moment Maxine leaves Bayou Burlesque, but more than half of the film’s 106 minutes have gone by before people start getting killed. I’ve seen some genre fans say that the wait was too long, but I didn’t mind it at all. For one thing, you can always expect West to hold off on the action. The House of the Devil was a very slow burn. Not a whole lot happened in that movie until the ending. It could be said that X is nearly the same, but I found it to be a rather lively and interesting movie even before blood starts getting spilled. I didn’t mind spending the time getting to know the pornographers and watching them work, and I liked the performances that were being delivered by the cast. There were some good subversions of expectations, and a surprise performance of the Fleetwood Mac song “Landslide”. I was already enjoying the movie a lot. Then when the murders kicked in, I started enjoying it even more. And even though it takes a while to get to the bloodshed, once it starts we still have a good 45 minutes or so of movie left for more murder, mayhem... and some quite disturbing and disgusting moments. Plus a good laugh or two.
X went over quite well with horror fans when it was released earlier this year, and has proven to be so popular that there has been a bit of backlash as well. But I have to count myself among the genre fans who are ready to name this one a modern slasher classic. I would rank it highly among the movies I’ve watched this year, I thought it was a blast. It’s very rare that I see something new and feel like featuring it with a Film Appreciation article here, but X is a new favorite and I’m confident that I’m going to be watching it many more times in the future.
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