I saw the movie X last night I feel like it deserves an in-depth review. Spoilers ahead.
About 10 years ago Ti West was a name that you'd hear about being having NEXT as a horror movie filmmaker. He deserved it after V/H/S, The Innkeepers, and The House of the Devil. The Innkeepers and The House of the Devil we're homages to horror films in the past when Horror movies at the time relied heavily on cgi, torture porn, and jump scares. West brought us films that felt like they belonged in the video rental store with some of our favorite movies that we watched over and over. X is West's newest homage film and it feels like the movie you always heard about but could never watch because it was too violent and no video store would ever carry it. After watching this movie I don't ever want to hear someone say, "You can't do that in movies today." Seriously if this movie came out in the 1970s it would be banned from theatres and when ever the movie would make rounds to your town it be followed with white ladies holding picket signs saying
This movie is titled X because you think the plot is about the people shooting a porno.
This movie is tilted X because in 1979 when this movie takes place and when it would have released it would have featured an X rating. I had to watch a comfort movie after seeing this shyt
I said Nah to Beetle Juice and Ghostbusters II because I didn't want to see nothing horror adjacent. If I had Disney+ I would have put on The Sword and The Stone. X turned me back into a kid, and I loved it
The movie starts off with a camera in the doorway. It took awhile for me to recognize the camera was in a doorway because at first I thought it was in 4:3. The movie was preparing me to go back in a time before I had a fancy widescreen tv and was watching something on tape in the family living room. They give you a crime scene where the majority of the movie takes place. I believe they do this so you can guess what happened to the characters which is ok because you damn sure aren't going to guess how it happened.
The movie introduces you to the victims and you don't necessarily care for them until after the first porno scene is finished. Friday The 13th Part IV is one of my favorite Jason movies because it has the best group of victims in it. This movie gives you enough that you think the people on screen are real enough people. In typical A-24 fashion you forget you're watching a Horror movie until something horrific happens. When something horrific does happen the movie doesn't stop and gets crazier and crazier. I think the whole cast did a great job. You got you're horror movie staples like the slut, the nerd, the no nonsense vet, the party girl, the innocent girl. You even kinda have the "I can't believe he was in this movie" guy with the porno producer because the whole time I was watching the movie I thought he was a Wilson brother doing an old Matthew McConaughey performance. The movie doesn't try to be meta like Cabin in the Woods or try to have ahhh ha bet you didn't see that coming. It gives you what you expect but it does it in a way that you've never seen before and when you think it's over it keeps going and the camera doesn't pull away.
All of the kills in the movie are great with only one exception. Kid Cudi was the only death in movie that wasn't satisfying. The first death is by an old lady and she kills a man with a brutality that I haven't seen since Michael Myers in the Rob Zombie movies. The old lady kept stabbing this poor man's neck like MM did in those films. All the gore looks realistic and the camera isn't afraid of showing it. The make up for the old characters is good and added to their menacing characters. Someone that I was watching the movie with said, "I'm glad both of my grandparents are dead because after this I wouldn't be able to look at them the same." There's one shot in the movie, towards the end, that shows the back of Mia Goth's head and shows the old woman's face. When I watched the movie I was like
They only do this when you have an actor playing both parts on screen. It wasn't until I looked the movie up later today that I found out Mia Goth plays Maxine and the Pearl, the old woman
. The movie was brutal and you didn't know who was going to make it out alive, if they do at all. The last 3 characters alive are the women and the movie kept you guessing on who was going to be the final girl. My
moment from watching the movie is when Jenna Ortega is trying to escape a locked basement and she gets an axe to her fingers and you see her fingers get mutilated.
The next time I'm driving out in the country and smell cow shyt and I'm rolling my windows up I'm definitely going to make sure my doors is locked because of these people
Ti West made his comeback with this film. He delivered a crazy white family Horror movie classic with X. I like to look at genre movies as a way of directors "battling" each other and with this film West was taking shot at the current leaders in the genre. I'm talking about your James Wans and Mike Flanagans. He letting them know that he had NEXT and his is RIGHT NOW. I'm looking at you now Eli Roth