X (2022)
Directed by Ti West
In 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make an adult film in rural Texas, but when their reclusive, elderly hosts catch them in the act, the cast find themselves fighting for their lives.
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With echoes of everything from “The Shining” to “Psycho” to “Boogie Nights” to “Alligator” to “Hardcore” to infamous porn films such as “Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie” and “Debbie Does Dallas,” this is an homage but also a strikingly original and cheerfully grotesque work, filled with dark humor, relatively complex subtext and gung-ho, all-in performances from the talented ensemble cast.
He also evokes other major horrors — especially Psycho and Hooper’s Chain Saw follow-up, Death Trap , aka Eaten Alive — to build background dread while the main characters think they’re in a comical, down-home Boogie Nights .
We see several of the porn scenes being shot, and like the ones in “Boogie Nights” they’re realistic and true to the scruffy pre-video porn vibe.
The introduction of the eerie farm environment is lifted straight from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” while the porn actors aspiring to be famous have the spirit of “Boogie Nights.”
While Mia Goth plays double duty as both Maxine and Howard’s wife Pearl, Brittany Snow’s performance wholly embraces this nostalgic take on what a porn actress from the late 1970s should feel like, reminiscent of Heather Graham in Boogie Nights.
Snow and Mescudi bring a heart and humor to these scenes that evoke Boogie Nights .
“X” is threaded with blithe references to key films — a car in a swamp like the one in “Psycho,” an ax through a door like the one that kicks off Jack Nicholson’s rampage in “The Shining,” an alligator borrowed from “Alligator” (ingeniously shot from high above in one jittery sequence), an ending that nods to the premise of Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore” (which came out in 1979).
While X points most overtly to the slasher classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – along with sly references to everything from The Shining to Paul Schrader’s Hardcore – what West offers up is more winking tribute than carbon copy.
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is the most obvious touchstone here, but there are references throughout to films like “Psycho” and “The Shining.”
With echoes of everything from “The Shining” to “Psycho” to “Boogie Nights” to “Alligator” to “Hardcore” to infamous porn films such as “Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie” and “Debbie Does Dallas,” this is an homage but also a strikingly original and cheerfully grotesque work, filled with dark humor, relatively complex subtext and gung-ho, all-in performances from the talented ensemble cast.
There’s a fine line between a compelling homage and a tedious exercise in stylistic replication, and West achieves the former, even as he nods to Psycho (1960) and The Shining (1980).
With homages to the stair scene in Tobe Hopper’s 1974 classic and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Rockett’s lens honors horror past with his palette.
Here he goes solo to pay homage to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” – the 1974 original, not the slack update available now on Netflix.
Ti West has done something unique here – although the plot is similar to the entertainingly original and fun 2011 feature BreadCrumbs – yet the inspiration from classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is abundantly clear.
West also clearly has a fondness for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , Tobe Hooper's revolutionary 1974 landmark, a film that X , set only five years later, explicitly echoes to an uncanny degree — and also revises.
“X” has a few nods to 1970s horror classics, such as 1974’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and 1978’s “Halloween.”
West percolates these ideas under the surface of his latest and, thus far, greatest film, an inspired blend of Boogie Nights (1997) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) that feels designed to trap its audience.
That said, if any of them had seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , which hit theaters in the fall of 1974, they’d be at least a little leery about piling into a van and heading to a remote farmhouse in an economically depressed swatch of rural Texas.
“X” is threaded with blithe references to key films — a car in a swamp like the one in “Psycho,” an ax through a door like the one that kicks off Jack Nicholson’s rampage in “The Shining,” an alligator borrowed from “Alligator” (ingeniously shot from high above in one jittery sequence), an ending that nods to the premise of Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore” (which came out in 1979).
While X points most overtly to the slasher classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – along with sly references to everything from The Shining to Paul Schrader’s Hardcore – what West offers up is more winking tribute than carbon copy.
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Thanks to the resurgence of “Scream” and “Halloween,” not to mention originals “Happy Death Day,” “Fear Street” and “Freaky,” the slasher genre has enjoyed a grand revival, but “X” feels like the apex mountain for this new era of young people getting their bodies mutilated in grotesque, often, brutal methods.
This teamed with the darkly humorous moments puts it in a similar vein to popular franchise Scream , with X shaping up to be another fun entry into the genre.
A much better “Texas Chainsaw” tribute than that wretched thing on Netflix last month and way smarter about slasher movies than the recent “Scream” sequel, writer-director Ti West’s X is a deliciously grisly entertainment existing on a level of craft well above most multiplex offerings, genre or otherwise.
Early successes for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th inspired a barrage of films over the ’80s and early ’90s, including The Prowler, April Fool’s Day, and Sleepaway Camp, that ultimately culminated with the reimagining of the genre with 1996’s Scream.
She displayed it earlier this year in, haha, the new “Scream,” but I far prefer this flavor of post-modern horror, which makes its references and bonds with its audience in images and moments rather than sub-Williamson dialogue.
When not acting himself, Ti West writes and directs his own work — notably the 2011 film The Innkeepers — as well as television episodes of “Scream” for MTV and “The Exorcist” for Fox.
Now, after nine years away from the genre, he dives back in with “X” a gory tribute to Austin filmmaker Tobe Hooper and while “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is the first thing that comes to mind, it seems that West was inspired by Hooper’s follow-up 1976’s “Eaten Alive.”
He also evokes other major horrors — especially Psycho and Hooper’s Chain Saw follow-up, Death Trap , aka Eaten Alive — to build background dread while the main characters think they’re in a comical, down-home Boogie Nights .
Returning to feature length filmmaking for the first time since 2013’s The Sacrament, West delivers his best Tobe Hooper impression with this loving pastiche of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Eaten Alive.
A deep-fried scummy Texas tale that summons up all of the grimy goopy 70s Tobe Hooper feels—most obvious (times twenty) it’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , but there’s also a good dose of Hooper’s ribald alligator epic Eaten Alive here for good measure—the first thing we hear is the buzzing of flies, and the next thing we see are the reddest, wettest guts splattered across the highway.
“X” is threaded with blithe references to key films — a car in a swamp like the one in “Psycho,” an ax through a door like the one that kicks off Jack Nicholson’s rampage in “The Shining,” an alligator borrowed from “Alligator” (ingeniously shot from high above in one jittery sequence), an ending that nods to the premise of Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore” (which came out in 1979).
There’s a fine line between a compelling homage and a tedious exercise in stylistic replication, and West achieves the former, even as he nods to Psycho (1960) and The Shining (1980).
Its influences extend well beyond ’70s slashers and include M. Night Shyamalan (think: The Visit and Old ) and Alfred Hitchcock (specifically, Psycho ) alongside many others.
With echoes of everything from “The Shining” to “Psycho” to “Boogie Nights” to “Alligator” to “Hardcore” to infamous porn films such as “Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie” and “Debbie Does Dallas,” this is an homage but also a strikingly original and cheerfully grotesque work, filled with dark humor, relatively complex subtext and gung-ho, all-in performances from the talented ensemble cast.
Her partner, the much older and sleazy smooth-talker Wayne (Martin Henderson), convinces her to star in a pornographic film titled The Farmer’s Daughter ; the success of which needs to make half as much as Debbie Does Dallas (1978) to quash their financial woes.
RJ views the film as “art” while Wayne views it as a cash cow ala Debbie Does Dallas.
He’s our 40-something patriarch who sees the outsider success of recent pornos like Debbie Does Dallas as a way to escape the doldrums of everyday life.
And also a brief course in film history, with particular attention to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and shout-outs to “Psycho” and “Debbie Does Dallas.”
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X (2022) is an homage to the early days of the modern slasher – Last House on the Left (1972), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and even Sleepaway Camp (1983), but with one crucial difference.
Early successes for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th inspired a barrage of films over the ’80s and early ’90s, including The Prowler, April Fool’s Day, and Sleepaway Camp, that ultimately culminated with the reimagining of the genre with 1996’s Scream.
A love letter to “Friday the 13th,” “Sleepaway Camp,” and obviously “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” but also the adult film industry, “X” has assembled an incredible ensemble ranging from the versatile Mia Goth to 2022’s glorfield MVP and newly anointed scream queen Jenna Ortega (she had a couple showdowns with our pal Ghostface earlier this year in the excellent “Scream” revival) to help keep the story gelling.
West wears his influences on his sleeve, deliberately invoking the visual language of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (especially during the early, on-the-road scenes in their van), as well as the long zooms and creepy score that recall “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.”
In the same way that Let’s Scare Jessica To Death embraces a melancholy end of the 1960s, X feels like Ti West looking back on the 1970s with similar sadness as he reflects back on the exploitation, horror, and pornographic films of the era.
Its refreshing lack of prudishness and its wholesale rejection of final girl tropes seem to frame it as a response to our current trend of constant artistic re-litigation of FUCKING EVERYTHING, wrapped in the clothes of Just Before Dawn or Let’s Scare Jessica to Death .