Film Review: Ti West’s X
A24
X is one of those films that was seemingly ordained to succeed even before audiences have had a proper chance to see it. We get the intrigue of the cast, a mix of yesteryear popstars and well-regarded up-and-comers; the cavalcade of buzz that surrounds a promising indie director getting a big-budget break, and the shiny, stylized trailer that showcases historic elements of the American Tapestry through an intensely romantic lens. I came into X primed for much of what I got: a fun ride that was appreciable on many levels, but ultimately felt too intentional to truly impress.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The film starts at the end, opening with police investigating a gore-stained farmhouse in the Texas countryside. This kind of start is an old tool that I personally never found to be especially effective, trying to whet the audience’s appetite by showing them the last page first, and here it didn’t really seem to do much apart from remind us that we should not to get bogged down or too hopeful about anything in between now and finding out what led us here.
In the infinitely more-interesting second scene of the film, we meet our core cast of characters as they load up a van outside the Bayou Burlesque and head for the highway. We don’t know what came immediately before, but the impression is that the group is getting quit of the Bayou and it may not be entirely by their own design. The faces around the van are young and handsome—though they span the full breadth of that carefully qualifiable spectrum–and belong to a group of bohemian wanderers who fancy themselves as pornographers-to-be. They’ve enlisted a Hitchcock-loving film student in an attempt to make a dirty movie that can also be a commercial hit. All that remains is to drive to a remote farm in rural Texas and breathe life into the apparently brilliant script.
As they cruise down the highway, “In the Summertime” by Mungo Jerry plays on the radio, and one line jumped out to me as I considered the film:
…If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal
If her daddy's poor, just do what you feel
This delivery, alongside other carefree do-as-you-will quips and sentiments that mark the opening scene, do a near-perfect job conveying the vibe of the film: the free-love rhetoric of the 1960s is still hanging around in 1979 when the film is set, but the polish has come off. As countless have learned, doing what thou wilt quickly loses its liberating quality when people can’t be trusted to assess whether or not they're harming others. Further, those heady ideas often fall on their face when the those of privilege who have come to the mindset find need of escape.
While none of the cast appear to have been born with a silver spoon, there's a pervasive sense that it wouldn't take much for any of them to cut and run if things went south. They are bound less by friendship or love so much as their mutual outsiderhood. Jackson (Kid Cudi) and his sometimes-girl Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) are the aged hands of the production and well into their thirties; Maxine (Mia Goth) is the would-be sex symbol who snorts coke at regular intervals and talks to the mirror about how she will not accept a life she doesn’t deserve; while Wayne (Martin Henderson), at a ripe forty-two, is the leader of the bunch and the originator of this whole new pornography scheme. There’s a vibe of the gold-hearted pimp about him, and it’s hard to believe he’s out for anyone but himself. Tagging along at the end are RJ, the aforementioned film student, and Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), his archetypically innocent girlfriend and boom-operator. Lorraine doesn’t know a lot about the project, but as she watches Bobby-Lynne and Jackson kiss in the back of the van, it’s clear that she is both repelled and enticed by their overt sexuality.
The feel of the film’s setting is distinctly Bible Belt, sending a clear message that these are the people on the fringes of society and will not be tolerated by the mainstream culture. Radio preachers intersperse with classic rock and roll as the individual characters take turns talking about what their uniquely American dream is. Everything is tinged with sepia-toned nostalgia, and the perpetual theme of everyone chasing dreams comes through loud clear. ‘I want the whole world to know my name, like Linda Carter or some shit’ Maxine tells Howard in a gas station, moments before purchasing a magazine with that very actress on the cover.
Even if Ti West hadn’t given us the grisly farmhouse opening, it’s not hard to imagine that most of these souls were doomed from jump. These early scenes are frequently juxtaposed with that of an old-time television preacher (Simon Prast) who could readily pass as Barry Goldwater without trying too hard. His topic of choice is always the lusts of the flesh and how it leads to damnation. These scenes serve to remind us that our would-be cinema stars are still very much outliers in American society at the time, and as surely as there will be blood all over that farmhouse we’re headed to, the sinners will be punished.
From there, the film proceeds more or less as you would expect: our cast arrives at the farm and stays in a bunkhouse, watched over by an elderly shotgun-toting farmer and his half-senile wife. This farmer makes it clear from jump that he doesn’t care for the look of the strangers who have decided to rent his bunkhouse, but apparently his misgivings don't extend past an extra twenty dollars. Everyone beds in, and our exiles set about filming their movie until they run afoul of the farmer and the blood begins to flow.
Sins of the Flesh
The thematic backbone of the film is its engagement with human sexuality, and how it is cultivated, expressed, and suppressed by the dominant culture. Lorraine, having witnessed a few sex scenes from the length of her boom-mic by the middle of the film, engages the older heads in a discussion of sexuality, love, and morality before concluding ‘I want to do a scene in the movie,’ after acknowledging that she doesn’t agree with all of their romantic conclusions about free love. This sets off a very human engagement with her boyfriend RJ, who despite espousing many progressive ideas up to this point, immediately forbids her to do it. This leads to a great moment where she turns an earlier line of his back on him, asking ‘when did you become such a prude?’, as he did to her when she found out what kind of film they were making.
The other, and much more developed and tragic exploration of nature and the need of being sexually desired comes in the form of Pearl, the elderly farmer’s wife who desperately longs to feel a sensual connection with her husband–or failing that, anyone–again. She comments to Maxine about how Howard would once do anything for her as the two look over pictures from her youth, when Pearl was a dancer.
I think this is a beautiful exploration, and one horror audiences, who by and large skew younger, should stop to reflect on. The need to be sexually desired, and to connect with another person on a psycho-sexual level is inborn to most of us, and for the majority of people under fifty, the idea that this is something ephemeral goes largely unconsidered. Pearl’s husband refuses her advances, saying ‘my heart can’t take it’ which is an uncharacteristically apt turn of phrase in this case, as we see that Pearl’s heart perhaps cannot take the idea that sensuality is behind her.
The characters of Maxine and Pearl are both played by Mia Goth, and these two are regularly juxtaposed throughout the film, filmed in similar positions, situations, and location. We see how Pearl is so keenly diminished, robbed of her ambitions and will for life when her youth and sexuality are taken away. This is explored with other characters, and reinforced repeatedly in the conflict between young and old. The theme is perhaps most pointedly hammered home by a respectable rendition of Landslide by Brittany Snow and Kid Cudi in the bunkhouse, just before the violence kicks off.
Promise of Youth?
The acting, writing, and cinematography are solid throughout, and despite a strong permutation of menace up until the first murder, there is a lingering feeling that I’ve seen this all before, and fairly recently. X feels very much like a film Tarantino could have done for his Grindhouse revival experience, and the weight of Ti West’s obvious influences sometimes bears too heavily on the film. At one point, Jenna Ortega uses an ax to smash through an interior door before sticking her face through the opening she’s made, effectively and unavoidably Jack Torrance-ing the scene in a way that is way too blunt to be appreciable.
West is one of the few directors where I’ve seen all of his major productions and, while I inevitably like whatever it is (thus far), I’m still not sure how to define him as a director. I’m curious to see what his next original storyline looks like.
From there, all bets are off, as the younger folk fall afoul of first Pearl and then Howard and the blood starts to spill. Unfortunately, this becomes the most arduous leg of the film, the movie doesn’t have a lot left to say about the things it has touched on. We simply see the older woman’s longing play out and turn to rage at her inevitable rejection, and it leaves all the things it started unfinished.
X comes together with a lot of exceptional elements that are worthy of consideration and discussion, but the substance ultimately gets muddled and we’re left with a film that tries on a lot but doesn’t do anything with it. Some of the characters even feel like they betray themselves, as Pearl, longing to rekindle her sexual spirit, resorts to calling the other women ‘whores’ and such. To see her adopt the rhetoric of the Puritanical and the repressed doesn’t track for me with what was set up to begin with.
Still, despite some thematic missteps, there’s a lot to appreciate about X, and it is bound to be an influential horror standby for the next generation of horror creators.
Verdict: 7.7/10
Strengths
Strong writing
Excellent cinematography, acting, and pacing
Good, violent kills with solid practical effects
Engages the topic of sexuality and youth effectively and interestingly
Weaknesses
Doesn’t do a tremendous amount of original work
Themes and interests get a bit muddled in the end
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