Sex Marks the Spot: A Review of X
Directed by Ti West
Written by Ti West
Produced by Ti West, Jacob Jaffke, Kevin Turen, Harrison Kreiss
Mia Goth as Maxine Minx
Jenna Ortega as Lorraine
Brittany Snow as Bobby-Lynne
Scott Mescudi as Jackson Hole
Martin Henderson as Wayne Gilroy
Owen Campbell as RJ Nichols
Stephen Ure as Howard
Additionally, James Gaylyn appears as Sheriff Dentler.
Make no mistake: X is a splatter flick. That much is made clear in the opening scenes where the Sheriff and a couple of deputies explore a farm house that is clearly the scene of the worst slaughter since the last time the Toronto Maple Leafs tried playing hockey. There’s blood and corpses everywhere. Obviously things did not end well for some or all of the cast.
It’s also a soft-verging-on-semi-erect porn flick. A group of 20-somethings decide to make their fortune in 1979 America by renting a secluded cabin and making their very own porn movie. The characters are hilariously trope-ridden. You have the sleazy but charming rhinestone cowboy (Henderson) who is director of this magnum opus, the ditzy and slutty blond (Snow), the black stud (Mescudi), and the teeny-bop aspiring porn queen with cocaine-fueled delusions of grandeur (Mia Goth). RJ is the squirrelly cameraman (Campbell) with his girlfriend Lorraine (Ortega), who has led a …sheltered… life and it both intrigued and repelled by the whole porn business. Lorraine’s fascination and curiosity leads to friction with RJ, who isn’t as worldly and sophisticated as he thought he was.
The locale for the shoot is on the property of a remote farm in east Texas, a cabin about 100 yards from the main house, in which a ruinously elderly couple, Howard (Ure) and Pearl (Goth) live.
The farmers aren’t the most social of couples. He’s paranoid and reclusive, and she’s just plain crazy.
You know it’s gonna get real messy, real quick, and it’s just a matter who the order in which characters get greased, and how. (There’s a monstrous alligator in the mix, this being east Texas.)
What makes this stand out from many other splatter flicks is that there is considerable wit behind the characterizations and dialogue, and a refreshing self-awareness that is neither smug nor arch. Mia Goth is standout in this. Stephen King, who notoriously (and perhaps oddly) doesn’t like slasher/splatter flicks, was effusive in his praise for this one, and it can’t ask for a more expert opinion than that.
It being a splatter flick, it obviously isn’t for everyone. A genre with notoriously low standards, this one is wry and with deliberately silly moments that actually endear. Ti West has his own unique approach. There’s an unexpected surprise hidden on plain sight, and if the penny hasn’t dropped by the penultimate scene, you’ll be delighted when you figure it out.
There is a prequel coming soon: Pearl. It was secretly shot at the same time a X.
