Ti West gets back to the throwback horror of his 2009 gem The House of the Devil with this weekend’s X, a gnarly slasher about a ragtag 1979 porn movie crew that sets up production at a rented cabin on the farmland property of an elderly couple, and winds up getting more than they bargained for from their hosts.
Riffing on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre while carving out its own unique portrait of multigenerational tensions—and the madness they can spawn—West’s latest is a gory and grimly funny battle of the ages, much of it pivoting around the twisted dynamic that develops between aspiring X-rated starlet Maxine and senior-citizen proprietor Pearl, both of them fearlessly embodied by Mia Goth. Also self-reflexively commenting on its own cinematic construction via producer Wayne (Martin Henderson), headliners Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson Hole (Scott Mescudi, aka Kid Cudi), cinematographer RJ (Owen Campbell) and his girlfriend Lorraine’s (Jenna Ortega) efforts to make a smutty classic, X is a grindhouser that’s smarter than it initially appears—even as it makes sure to deliver the splattering money-shot goods.
More intriguing still, X is only the first chapter in a longer saga, as West recently revealed—following the film’s SXSW festival premiere—that he’s already shot a follow-up: a prequel titled Pearl that investigates the WWI-era backstory of Goth’s wrinkled villain. For the writer/director, it’s an opportunity to create the first franchise for A24, long known for “elevated horror” hits such as The Witch, Hereditary, and It Comes At Night. More simply, however, it’s yet another venture that will allow him to strut his scary-cinema stuff—something at which he’s an expert, as evidenced by not only The House of the Devil but also 2011’s The Innkeepers and 2013’s The Sacrament. After a seven-year hiatus from filmmaking during which time he focused his attention on television (helming episodes of Scream, Chambers, Tales from the Loop and Them, among others), X marks his triumphant return to the big screen.
