When you get down to brass tacks, it’s pretty amusing that a studio like A24 — which, I probably do not need to remind you, won an upset Best Picture just some five years ago — has become synonymous with horror cinema more so than the prototypically “artsy” output that one would associate with a boutique distributor/production house. Some would argue that they’ve done so by “elevating” the genre, given that the discourse surrounding films like Ari Aster’s Hereditary/Midsommar and their ilk has resulted in that very term being the butt of jokes in the latest Scream movie, but I’d argue that the main distinction between elevated horror and horror is a mindset birthed as a byproduct of marketing and designed to fellate the egos of those who wouldn’t be caught dead at a truly trashy screening of something at their local multiplex or arthouse (it’s the “I’m not like the other ____” of cinemagoing). On the other hand, you could argue that a guy like Ti West had a whole lot to do with that term’s creation: While his movies are incredibly fun little slices of horror cinema, they, perhaps unintentionally, bear the markings of the genre. After all, one does not kill Greta Gerwig in one of their films and escape the fact that she was already a well-established mumblecore star, even before she hooked up with A24 (and Noah Baumbach) and went on to cinema superstardom.
So, it’s with genuinely pleasant surprise that West’s new film, X, is the kind of out-and-out trashy, goofy, and bloody horror picture that seems relegated further and further to the dustbin of immediate DTV derision in the modern era. It’s an out-and-out slasher that embraces cliche as often as it desires to subvert it, centering around a group of filmmakers and performers in Houston who make their way out to the sticks in Texas one afternoon in 1979 in order to shoot a low-fi porn flick in a guest house owned by a decrepit old couple in the privacy of the backcountry. There’s a lot riding on this for each member of the group, from Wayne (Martin Henderson), the strip club proprietor-turned-producer looking to break into the industry as the home video market takes off, to his girlfriend, Maxine (Mia Goth), whose eyes are only focused on the superstardom that she’s hoping to achieve, to Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) and RJ (Owen Campbell), the boom operator and director/cinematographer, who are also trying to break through, at least as far as independent cinema is concerned. I don’t mean to exclude the other members of the cast, such as Kid Cudi (playing a walking G.I. Joe doll-turned-porn-stud) and Brittany Snow (the star of the film), each of whom does a swell job, but walking through every motivation would take more space than I’m allotted.
As you might expect, the presence of hot-and-heavy kids (comparatively) on the property has some odd effects on the old-timers who are there, but in a welcome surprise, they’re not there to pull a Red State on them and enforce the old-time religion with the sword that Christ talked about. Rather, they’re immersed in their own psychosexual nightmare and have plenty of skeletons in their own closet. It’s interesting how much sympathy West paints these two figures, who seemingly hopped out of Grant Wood’s American Gothic to menace our leads, who are well-rounded enough that they have legitimate motivations behind why they want to, you know, kill some twenty-somethings. On the other hand, they’re somewhat let down by the same kind of cliche that follows the depiction of nude old folks in A24’s other films, being specters of the sad times ahead presented in garish fashion for the youthful audience to gag at when they’re in varying states of undress, wrinkles and varicose veins amped up to show how gross the ravages of time can be on the human body. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad in any other context (and I doubt that West was dictated to make a film like this), but given how often this pops up in their films, one can’t help but see a dispiriting pattern emerging that, again, only serves to flatter its intended audience.
Happily, it’s very easy to ignore this aspect of X and just let yourself be taken on the ride because it’s such a damn well-constructed one. As alluded to above, there’s enough subversion of the slasher genre going on here to keep things interesting on a plot level — lazy writing isn’t an issue here, and West goes out of his way to ensure that the film is always funny or engaging when it’s not actively trying to gross or creep you out, and he has a lot of fun with the setting and aesthetic, playing up the stylization and the contrast between the gaudiness of the sultry urbanites and the relative quiet of their rural surroundings. There’s some really swell camerawork here, as well, including an opening shot that’s perhaps the best psuedo-aspect ratio change that the studio has done (it’s in the framing, friends), and to say the very least, the VFX and make-up are top-notch. The kills are fantastically done, full of icky and messy practical gore that beats the pants off of anything you’ve seen before in a release from this particular studio (and yes, I am including that scene from Hereditary in this mixture). Hell, there’s even a moment where I’m legit curious if the MPAA put the same pressure on West as they did Luca Guadagnino (in Suspiria) and Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill) to do things with the lighting in order to ensure the film hit theaters with an R. But most importantly, I’m glad that West is helping shatter the concept of what an A24 horror film can be, at least in the popular consciousness: X is a resounding proof that nothing was really broken within the genre in the first place, and that sometimes simple pleasures are the best way to really get off.