X: A Questionable Lark
(This review contains possible SPOILERS)
Ti West’s X feels like a lark, so maybe I should just lighten up and enjoy it as such. But for as much as it does right, it’s also questionable in ways that have nothing to do with its actual content.
The inquiry at the core of X is: “what turns you on?” It suggests that sex without love is just sex, and that love is something different altogether. It also suggests a line is crossed when bloodshed occurs at the expense of sexual gratification.
Harking back to the tone of 2011’s The Innkeepers – spooky atmosphere with a touch of humor – X attempts to chronicle a day in the lives of some working-class dreamers looking to strike gold with a homemade porno flick. Sweetening the pot is a cast of familiar genre faces: Mia Goth (A Cure for Wellness); Brittany Snow (Would You Rather); Jenna Ortega (The Babysitter: Killer Queen) and Owen Campbell (My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To).
Dead-end Synchronicity
What’s strange about X is its dead-end synchronicities and muddled motivations. The dialog and character development barely rises above the median for this sort of thing, and the cliches West once subverted are omnipresent here (take a drink every time someone wanders off on their own).
It somehow manages to be too overt and too subtle – in the end, I’m not altogether sure what the real point is. There’s nuance, and then there’s not filling in enough essential gaps to create even a semblance of nuance.
But maybe that’s The Point – in one of many achingly obvious lines, someone states that people don’t watch porn for the plot. Conversely, director RJ (Campbell) proclaims his aspiration to make an “avant garde” movie. Such seems to be the weird struggle occurring in X proper: the fetishism of worn-down film stock, cheesy adult-film acting, and the desire to meld that with a faux Tobe Hooper-by-way-of-Hitchcock aesthetic.
Flaccid Homage
A character name-drops Psycho. There’s even a shower scene. One shot reverse-peers into a camera lens, obscuring the sexual activity it’s capturing. Okay, Peeping Tom. Yet West’s affectionate quotes, which have yielded strong original work in the past, seem…well…flaccid here.
To be blunt, X is like a bunch of figurative dicks looking for any and every aesthetic hole to fuck…at the expense of telling a fully realized story populated by believable characters.
In a reversal from the young and vivacious would-be filmmakers, their isolated-farmhouse hosts are Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (Goth under a pile of old-age makeup), decrepit pensioners lamenting the pleasures (physical and otherwise) of a bygone era. The twist is that these seemingly harmless codgers are sadists who rekindle their dormant passion through the slaughter of nubile young bodies…or something.
The decision to make two elderly folks the perpetrators of carnage is inspired, but West’s heavy-handed dialog (“…you have it so easy”; “…I used to be like you”) demystifies the devil, leaving an emperor and empress with – sometimes literally – no clothes. Making Howard and Pearl simply resentful – albeit homicidally so – detracts from their menace, and when you have younger actors portraying said elders, it becomes a visual distraction.
Give me the undefined, “saw-is-family” insanity of Leatherface any day.
Sin and Salvation?
There are more empty homages scattered throughout: the gator from Eaten Alive; the door-breaking from The Shining; even an ode to Brian De Palma’s love of split-screen. None of this adds up to much. And the use of tired needle drops like “Landslide” and “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” just made me wonder why West went for such obvious choices (though both have their thematic purpose).
It’s a shame that our single-minded characters seem to have their misfortunes coming to them long before they’ve fallen out of favor with our Lord and Savior by engaging in extramarital sex.
Oh, that’s another thing: the tired blare of a televangelist playing over the TV, underlining clichéd notions of sin and salvation. Coke is snorted. A “money shot” is wiped off an actress’ backside. Kid Cudi walks around in the buff. A virginal character decides she wants to get in on the action. The van transporting the crew has “Plowing Service” printed on the side. Har-de-har.
Maybe it has something to do with the way pornography has touched even the smallest aspects of American culture in 2022, but all of these elements feel so…unsurprising.
Lacking an X Factor
I feel like I should love X like I love most of West’s movies, but even when it tries to reach for some greater, more thoughtful plane, it comes up short. On two occasions, producer/strip-joint-owner Wayne (Martin Henderson) proclaims that Maxine (Goth without old-age makeup) has “an X factor,” but her performance – within and without the movie-within-a-movie – feels like a hollow, nudity-friendly impersonation of Anna Paquin in True Blood.
Furthermore, why bother setting X in 1979 (announced with its own red-white-and-blue title card)? I suspect West is ribbing on the current pop-cultural fascination with the 1980s. Or maybe he’s harking back to an era before horror films were sentenced to death by a million MPAA-mandated cuts. Or perhaps he just has warm nostalgia for polyester suits and afros?
I just wish he’d added some substance to the proceedings. X goes down pretty easily in the moment, but its lingering aftertaste is one of narrative and aesthetic questions that sour the experience overall. Somewhere along the line, West should’ve decided whether he wanted to make a romp like The Babysitter or a gutter-level sleaze-fest like Last House on Dead End Street – not a murky combination of the two.
2.5 out of 5 stars
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Crash Analysis Support Team
Jonny Numb
Jonny Numb (aka Jonathan Weidler) only disrobes before writing a review. He co-hosts The Last Knock horror podcast and occasionally pops up on Movies Films & Flix. His writing on non-horror cinema can be found periodically at The Screening Space.
THE LAST KNOCK horror podcast is a Crash Palace Productions’ featured show. Besides this site, you can find THE LAST KNOCK on iTunes and Spotify and more, with new shows posted every other Sunday at 9 PM ET.
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(X movie still from A24.)