X

 X (2022)

Amazingly, 95% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 205 reviews)

Runtime: 105 minutes

Directed by: Ti West

Starring: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Kid Cudi, Martin Henderson

From: A24/BRON/MAD SOLAR

I never thought I’d see another Ti West movie, but here we go.

Long ago I’ve reviewed a few of his pictures; I won’t link to any of them as all of them aren’t great compared to what I write now. Let me summarize: 

* House of the Devil had some decent performances and the general idea was fine. However, too much of the movie was as exciting as watching mold develop on cheese and when the big bad reveals itself, it was just laughable.
* The Innkeepers would have been better if the two leads weren’t hipster D-bags (why did the guy have a fauxhawk if he was starting to lose his hair?) and it didn’t feel so amateur. I remember especially not being happy w/ Lena Dunham’s cameo either.
* His shorts in VHS and The ABC’s of Death were either more mold growing on cheese-the former-or extremely gross and puerile-the latter.
* The Sacrament made me so mad I thought it’d be the last thing of his I’d ever see. The movie was simply a copy of Jim Jones and Jonestown; that’s a real life story worth knowing but this found footage film (yes) was not only awful overall & so inept that I swear the setting was originally a foreign country before it was switched to Mississippi (as if it’s in the United States, why was there a big deal made about the crew having passports?!), it felt like blatant lazy exploitation of a horrible tragedy.

Yet the one time I saw the trailer for X, it surprised me-using a Foghat song was a good call-and even though I never pulled the trigger on a theatrical viewing despite that thought ran through my mind more than once, that trigger was finally pulled after there was a flash sale on Prime of the UHD version for just a few bucks about two weeks ago. With all that backstory out of the way, did I finally like a Ti West picture?

By now I am sure that people are familiar w/ the plot of how a 70’s porn crew surreptitiously films in rural Texas on the property of a rural couple but things go awry… so instead I’ll talk about the picture as a whole. My reaction was, “Meh.” It started off fine enough-even if the Texas Chain Saw Massacre influence was rather blatant-and I did giggle at the adult film aspects, including the pretentious cameraman (although why did that cameraman also edit X and include those weird flourishes?) but boy did I lose my patience in the second half with the typical Ti West pacing and (even w/ HDR) how damn dark the movie became in terms of visual appearance. What “the big bad” was also made me laugh in a bad way, due to how improbable it was for me.

The 1970’s era is always appealing yet the movie didn’t really wow me in terms of plot, most of the performances or the gore. I’m unsure of the attempt to make Mia Goth a star, although Jenna Ortega once again delivered with the material she was given. After I finally gave this a chance, my main thought was, what was the hubbub all about? 

Technically this is my “favorite” West picture yet I was totally ambivalent about the events that transpired. You can have all the 70’s tunes, religious zealots, cocaine and naked women & yet it was as flavorful as oatmeal At least I learned my lesson to avoid Ol’ Ti for the rest of time as his work is just not for me.