The overall plot synopsis of X didn’t exactly make me interested to see the film, despite its poster and trailer suggesting a somewhat dynamic style. What made me curious was that there was a prequel released the same year called Pearl. In the modern era of filmmaking, you don’t expect a sequel or prequel to a movie unless it’s a financial success. So, if the filmmakers were willing to continue the story of X within the same year, there must be something interesting going on, right?

Pros

Practical gore effects
Some tense, creepy scenes
Decent acting

Cons

Too dark to see anything; frustratingly dark
Moves at a snail’s pace
Looks too polished for the type of movie it’s imitating
Underwhelming story and horror

Plot & Thoughts

A group of filmmakers are trying to make a porn movie in 1979—we know the year because it suddenly appears on the screen at the beginning in big, patriotic numbers. To save on their budget, they travel to a secluded farm run by two very old people named Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (Mia Goth). The farm has an empty boarding house on the property, which is ideal for the shoot, but the group has not told the landlords what their intentions are for the afternoon and evening. The porn’s executive producer, Wayne (Martin Henderson), is convinced that the home video market is going to take off and that their porn will be the next Debby Does Dallas, which will skyrocket all of their careers. His girlfriend, Maxine (Mia Goth), is one of the stars and is determined to become famous because she believes she deserves a better life than what she’s got, while the other ‘actors’ seem happy to just have sex on film. The cameraman/director of the film, RJ (Owen Campbell) is an artist who wants to make an auteur porn. His girlfriend, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), who is a little off-put at first by the experience as the boom mic operator for a porn film, seems to slowly get more interested in the job as time goes on. Unfortunately for all of them, the farm’s residents are not exactly the friendliest people in the world and seem to take offense to what the kids are doing on their land. That’s when the murdering starts.

I have mixed feelings about X. On one hand, I admire its simplicity. It’s basically another film that follows the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s format of sex-crazed youth getting killed by deranged people on some southern farmland. On the other hand, I think it misses the mark on what made that movie great and what X is trying to achieve. It feels like it’s trying to emulate an exploitation film from the ’70s era with the amount of nudity and gore that is on display. It even has editing cuts that mimic how a low-budget exploitation movie would have been shoddily cut together with the film reels to connect everything into one film. There are random jump cuts and certain editing choices that are deliberately amateurish. However, there is one big problem with the overall presentation that undermines all these little touches: the movie just looks too polished and clean.

If they were going to go with the style they chose, I would have preferred if they avoided the high-quality digital film and went with something dirtier and granular to match the look of an exploitation movie. That isn’t to say that everything is clean and clear on the screen, because more than half of X is shot in the dark and it’s poorly lit to the point that, even if you watch the movie in a dark room, you’ll struggle to see what is going on. If they wanted an example of how they could have made everything work, they could have just watched the Grindhouse films Planet Terror and the first half of Deathproof. If they had even matched the look of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I think it really would have made the directing and editing style of X work tremendously.

But the style of the film isn’t something that should be held as the end-all-be-all detail of a movie on which to judge. How is everything else? Fine. The acting is good across the board, with some characters being likable and unlikable by the end. The banter and dialogue among the porn filmmakers is serviceable. The occasional moments of gore are realistic-looking and shocking in the way you would want them to be in a movie like this. Some scenes even have a decent amount of tension, like when Maxine is swimming in the pond in the beginning, however, it doesn’t all culminate in a product that manages to be scary or interesting. I was pretty bored through the first two acts and expecting something special in the final act to turn my opinion around, but that never happened. When everything was over, I just shrugged my shoulders and went to bed.

TL;DR

For all the attention X has gotten as another big hit in the A24 horror film catalog, I didn’t think it was anything special. It’s fine; it isn’t bad. It just doesn’t do enough to justify its intended style or existence. Doing a halfway attempt at an exploitation movie makes it seem like the film doesn’t have a real identity. If anything, it just comes across as a softcore porno with a horror subplot. Maybe that will be enough to entertain you for the evening, but I expected a little more than what I got.

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