X
A movie that wears its inspirations on its sleeve is not always a good thing, but when it finds a way to subvert them, that is where things get interesting. Ti West’s primary influence in “X” is “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” but he uses that template to take jabs at the male ego, religious zealots, and sleazy porn producers. The result is one of the best slashers since the early days of the genre.
We begin to six filmmakers packed in a van in 1979, going to an isolated Texas farmhouse to shoot a porn flick. There’s the producer (Wayne, played by Martin Henderson) and his stripper girlfriend (Maxine, played by Mia Goth). The director (RJ, played by Owen Campbell) and his sound girl girlfriend (Lorraine, played by Jenna Ortega). The black stud (Jackson, played by Kid Cudi) and the blonde bombshell (Bobby-Lynne, played by Brittany Snow). They arrive at the farmhouse, and Wayne reminds the elderly owner (Howard, played by Stephen Ure) that they had talked. After they get settled in, they get to work, but Maxine makes her way to the lake while waiting for her scenes to be shot, and she meets Howard’s wife, Pearl (also played by Goth). That meeting portends dangerous things coming up for everyone.
Keeping the cast small allows West to let us get to know these characters, their personalities, and- in the case of the filmmakers- their views on what they are doing. Wayne is a producer with very few morals, while RJ is someone who wants to “elevate” this beyond just being a sleazy porn film with how he shoots the action. Jackson and Bobby-Lynne know what is expected of them, while Maxine has the mentality that, what she does in this film, is going to make her a star. Lorraine is the “church girl”; she doesn’t feel comfortable that this is what she’s doing, even though RJ tells her, “you have to start somewhere.” But, as the shoot goes on, her thoughts on it changes; she wants to be part of the action. Suddenly, RJ is not as comfortable with her working on this, and when he storms off the set afterwards, that is when the film gets put on hold and leads to violence. The way West structures the film is not so much “Chain Saw Massacre” but the original “Friday the 13th”- we get a sense of pending danger, but it’s not unleashed until halfway into the film. It’s a slow-burn slasher, but it’s always adding layers to the suspense so that, when the slashing occurs, we can say we both expected it as well as were taken aback by it. Throughout the film, the old couple has on a preacher discussing damnation and immorality, a nod to the rise of the evangelical morality panics of the late ’70s/early ’80s when it comes to entertainment, though we don’t realize the full significance of the preacher until the very end.
“X” is a return to slashers being down-and-dirty in how they approach the material. The ’90s and 2000s began to see a slick nature to the filmmaking take hold, and that feels wrong to the genre (though it doesn’t mean a slasher isn’t good if it goes that way). This is taking the genre back to its low-budget, disreputable roots, and I love every startling moment of this film. Ti West has the goods.
