| Director(s) | Ti West |
| Principal Cast | Mia Goth as Maxine / Pearl Jenna Ortega as Lorraine Martin Henderson as Wayne Gilroy Scott Mescudi as Jackson Owen Campbell as RJ Brittany Snow as Bobby-Lynne Stephen Ure as Howard |
| Release Date | 2022 |
| Language(s) | English |
| Running Time | 106 minutes |
| Report Card | Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary |
NOTE: This is a new release and the review is based off a theatre viewing. This means the review won’t feature common elements like visual analysis, extended theme analysis, or long-form discussions of the cinematic techniques being used. Once I am able to get a copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from the review will be updated to match the current site’s standard.
The camera starts positioned behind a doorway, framing the shot in a smaller boxier format reminiscent of old-school movies. The camera pushes through the door and the frame extends to a wide shot, revealing a bloody crime scene. This change in frame size sets the stage for what’s to come as the film proper finds itself switching between a boxy format and a wide format, the former used in depicting the pornographic film that the main characters of the story are shooting and the latter used to depict the story proper. As the camera crosses the door’s threshold from one “frame” to another, it becomes apparent that the liminal space between these two frames of reference – art and reality – is what X sets out to explore.
While police investigate the trail of violence at the scene, a television set on the premises blares the ramblings of a conservative Christian preacher talking about moral degradation – a clear contrast in values to both the violent setting and the story of the aspiring pornographers. With carnage guaranteed, the film cuts to 24 hours earlier.
One of the crew-members, Maxine (Mia Goth) sits in front of a mirror and gazes into her reflection. She adulates herself while snorting cocaine, affirming her identity as a “star”. Her boyfriend and the producer of her films, Wayne (Martin Henderson) retrieves her from the dressing room she occupies, frisking her and the rest of his crew to a rural property in Texas for their next project. On the way to the location, the crew enter a gas station; Maxine bemoans her lack of status but Wayne assuages her and reaffirms that her “X-factor” will propel her into the limelight; while the couple valorizes the star-making powers of pornography the voice of the Christian preacher from the film’s start comes into prominence from a television in the station, decrying the degenerate functions of sexual deviancy brought about by the culture of sexual liberation; once again a contrast in values is emphasized between conservative Christian values and the pleasures which the former decries as sin.
Even within the crew there’s a difference in orientation towards sex. The director of the pornographic film, RJ (Owen Campbell) believes that porn can be elevated to the level of “art” while the actors see it as nothing more than a good bit of fun; it’s just smut after all. Thus, sex is positioned as art, entertainment, impulse, and source of evil. Director Ti West takes these perspectives and also transposes them against the slasher genre, a mapping which works out given the similarities in domain; slashers not only feature healthy amounts of fanservice in the form of scantily-clad/nude women but the sub-genre’s focus on gore, violence, and methods of execution position it as a pornography of violence.
In this sense, the moralizing of the preacher doubles as the moralizing inherent to the slasher genre which often finds its most promiscuous characters dying in brutal fashion while the virginal characters, chaste and “uncorrupt”, escape from the clutches of the killer. This transformation of the sub-genre’s themes to literal character qua superego gives the film a distinctive flavor wherein the protagonists are less fighting an antagonist killer as much as they’re fighting the ethical template by which “slashers” are structured. As the film cuts between the pornography being shot and the story proper, the binaries present between slasher/porn, porn/art, art/reality become blurry and suggest that the difference is just a question of vantage point.
The beauty of X stems from its ability to engage in such posturing without forcing the audience to forgo the slasher proper. West constantly cuts from shots of the porno to shots of the film proper begging the question on where artifice and art begin and end in relation to one another. In addition, he consistently utilizes a triple cross-cut between seemingly disparate events to suggest a hidden connection. None of these cuts interrupt the flow of the action or the momentum of the story, so an audience uninterested in the why can enjoy the bloodshed unabashedly without having to worry about thinking through a potential payoff while viewers more focused on cerebral elements of the filmmaking and themes can analyze the flow of the editing – it’s the perfect balance between engaging with the audience while entertaining them in the manner they hope.
REPORT CARD
| TLDR | X is one of the best slashers to come out this side of Wes Craven’s Scream, deconstructing the slasher sub-genre in a fresh new way while relishing in its gory fun. The film’s navigation into the intersections of art, sexuality, reality along with the clever nods to the horror genre at large make it a must-watch for genre fans looking for a great time while providing enough heady material for viewers wanting to do a deeper-dive on the material. |
| Rating | 10/10 |
| Grade | A+ |
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .