I keep thinking I like the output of studio A24 but, when I really think about it, I have only thoroughly enjoyed The Witch, and that was released a long time ago. I also keep thinking I like the films of director Ti West, but I really only enjoyed The Innkeepers and that was released many years ago.
2022’s X did not change my opinion of the director nor of the studio which distributed it. There is the potential for interesting developments up until it decides to shoot itself in the foot. To put it more precisely, it is around the time a character steps barefoot on a long, upright nail that goes through their foot.
The film is set in 1979, as ridiculous star-spangled, red-white-and-blue numbers filling the screen inform us. The movie proper begins at a topless joint in Houston where aspiring adult film producer Martin Henderson is picking up dancers Mia Goth and Brittany Snow for a trip out to the country to film a porno. Along in the van for the ride are the male, um…member of the acting troupe (Scott Mescudi), cameraman Owen Campbell and his sound recorder / girlfriend Jenna Ortega.
Already the film is all pastiche. It’s set in Texas in the 1970’s and we have a group of young(-ish) people in a van, so you know how badly this wants to be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I’m surprised they don’t pass a dead armadillo, though they do drive slowly through the guts of a cow that has been hit by a semi. Then there’s the porno-chic layer to this, which wants to remind us of Deep Throat, or at least bring to mind the feel of that film, as shared in the public consciousness. There are also numerous wipe transitions, which are supposed to recall…I don’t know…Star Wars, maybe? Not sure what Ti was going for there.
Anywho, the destination is a boarding house on the property of an old, decrepit couple who live in the main house. The husband (Stephen Ure, in extensive old-man makeup) tells these meddling kids he doesn’t like them and tells them to stay in the house and away from his wife (Mia Goth, in a weird double-role employing not-entirely-convincing old-age makeup).
You see, the old lady hasn’t been getting it in some time. Her husband’s dicky ticker is keeping her from getting the dick she craves. Her furnace starts warming up when she spies some of the porno shoot through a barn window, and she gets really upset when her fire gets going and nobody’s bringing the wood. I challenge anybody to summarize this aspect of the plot more tactfully than I have done here.
This is around the half-way point and it is here, as I mentioned before, things start to go off the rails. Like much of A24’s oeuvre, I detect a smug feeling of superiority of this over the slasher films before this century. But they don’t have anything to crow about, as the carnage here is indistinguishable from those earlier films. The only difference is the slasher films of the 1980’s did not have pretentions of being more than what they were on the surface. I may not be a fan of that genre, but those films knew exactly what they were. X, on the other hand, seems to hint at greater aspirations while, in the end, not seeming to know precisely what it is.
I will concede there was some promise up until it becomes a straight-up slasher. There is an interesting bit of drama when Ortega decides she wants to perform in the film, which devastates Campbell. That felt more honest than any other moment here. While this moment does provide some conflict, it is only briefly explored, with the thread abandoned shortly thereafter.
One of the film’s most memorable scenes intercuts between a conversation between two Goths (well, one young one and one who is supposed to be extremely old) and footage of the porno being made. Even then, this is sabotaged by the fake porn footage to which we are subjected. Anybody who has seen even a minute of the real thing from that era would know this is too well-made. At least, there’s too many cuts. The whole thing fails to ring true.
I feel I need to talk more about the verisimilitude here. While this is obviously a loving tribute to a certain era and particular genres of it, there were occasional moments which stood out to me as blatantly false. At one point, Murphy sings Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”, though in a vocal style that is de rigueur today and not then. Phrasing may be a subtle thing, but I can tell you nobody was using what is the standard in the 21st century back in the 20th. At another point, a character tells somebody to “stay in their own lane”, which also felt anachronistic. I started waiting for somebody to use the phrases “sex positive” or “intimacy coordinator”.
X is a curious film, though I don’t think it is as mysterious as it thinks it is. I walked away from it with the strong impression some ideas and cultural tropes were tossed together in hopes the audience would find deeper meaning in the sum total. Consider the younger Goth’s cocaine use throughout the runtime, as she uses a rolled-up two-dollar bill as a straw. That’s a curious denomination of currency to employ for that purpose, and it doesn’t seem to have any deeper meaning. It is simply odd. I think West should have had her using a $3 bill instead, then waited to see if anybody noticed that and, if they did, whether they bestowed a deeper meaning upon it.
Dir: Ti West
Starring two Mia Goths, Jenna Ortega and a CGI gator I neglected to mention in the body of this essay
Watched on blu-ray