← Back to Reviews
in
X, 2022
A small crew of adult film workers head out to a remote farm property to film an adult movie. Director Wayne (Martin Henderson) is confident that with actresses Maxine (Mia Goth) and Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and actor Jackson (Kid Cudi), plus cameraman RJ (Owen Campbell) and sound-operator Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), he’s onto something brilliant. But the elderly couple who own the farm, Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (Mia Goth), are hiding some deadly secrets.
Despite doing a very fun job of playing with both film-within-a-film moments and meta-horror moments, this fun slasher left me just a little wanting.
Overall, this film is very fun, and the game cast really elevates it. A big part of the film’s plot revolves around Goth’s character Maxine having an “X-factor”, and it’s certainly true in the sense of this film. Goth has an undeniable presence here, and you can totally buy that Wayne believes she’ll be a star. Henderson as Wayne plants his character firmly with one foot in optimism and the other foot in pragmatism. Snow and Kid Cudi add a humorous spark in their supporting roles. Campbell’s turn as RJ, determined that this film will be ART, is a lot of fun, especially when he has a meltdown over his girlfriend wanting to participate in the film. Ortega’s Lorraine feels a bit slight, but she at least gets some really fun moments in the last act.
There are also some very strong visual moments. Not being anything like an expert in 1970s erotica, I can at least say that I liked the look of those sequences and the way that the color schemes were used. And on the horror front, there are also some great and creepy images. A fantastic overhead shot involving an alligator. Engaging shots combining background and foreground. And several moments where the characters are bathed in blunt, bloody red light.
In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I’ll just say that when it comes to the character motivations and how it connects to the bloodletting, this film actually has a very well-realized character arc for all of its major players. Time is taken to establish elements about Howard and Pearl that pay off later and keep them from being just random scary old people boogeymen. The movie even goes to a place not usually addressed in horror movies, and that’s the jealousy that older people can feel toward younger people not just of their youth/beauty, but of their potential and their experiences.
I also appreciated the film’s attitude toward its adult film stars. It’s able to poke a bit of fun at them, but doesn’t dehumanize them. There’s the old horror trope of the disposable, slutty character (and the male equivalent of the disposable bozo), but all of these people are the slutty ones, LOL, and none of them are disposable. They are all more or less likable, which adds emotional investment to their fates as the film progresses. It’s kind of a neat trick that this was a film where I cared about the characters even as I appreciated the over-the-top way that many of them were dispatched. I particularly liked the hard look that the film took at RJ, a man who rhapsodizes about the artistry of his film, but then has a little-boy meltdown when his girlfriend wants to participate. A lot of people have this unhealthy push-pull relationship with sexual personas, lusting after them and feeling contempt for them at the same time. The character of RJ calls out this dynamic and his bathtub breakdown was one of the funniest parts of the film for me.
Somehow, though, I didn’t quite get to a place of love with this one. I think that honestly, a big part of it was the decision to have Mia Goth also play Pearl in prosthetics and makeup. Why did they do this? The makeup, with all due respect to the people who surely worked very hard on it, looks like bad old-age makeup from the 80s. Howard and Pearl don’t look like real people. They look like younger people wearing a lot of prosthetics, and it’s perpetually distracting. There’s something about centering horror on someone elderly (and even emphasizing the “horror” of elderly bodies) and not even having an older person in that role that just feels off to me. I kept waiting for something to happen to justify it and . . . nope.
Altogether a fun film, but didn’t land quite as well as I hoped it would.
X, 2022
A small crew of adult film workers head out to a remote farm property to film an adult movie. Director Wayne (Martin Henderson) is confident that with actresses Maxine (Mia Goth) and Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and actor Jackson (Kid Cudi), plus cameraman RJ (Owen Campbell) and sound-operator Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), he’s onto something brilliant. But the elderly couple who own the farm, Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (Mia Goth), are hiding some deadly secrets.
Despite doing a very fun job of playing with both film-within-a-film moments and meta-horror moments, this fun slasher left me just a little wanting.
Overall, this film is very fun, and the game cast really elevates it. A big part of the film’s plot revolves around Goth’s character Maxine having an “X-factor”, and it’s certainly true in the sense of this film. Goth has an undeniable presence here, and you can totally buy that Wayne believes she’ll be a star. Henderson as Wayne plants his character firmly with one foot in optimism and the other foot in pragmatism. Snow and Kid Cudi add a humorous spark in their supporting roles. Campbell’s turn as RJ, determined that this film will be ART, is a lot of fun, especially when he has a meltdown over his girlfriend wanting to participate in the film. Ortega’s Lorraine feels a bit slight, but she at least gets some really fun moments in the last act.
There are also some very strong visual moments. Not being anything like an expert in 1970s erotica, I can at least say that I liked the look of those sequences and the way that the color schemes were used. And on the horror front, there are also some great and creepy images. A fantastic overhead shot involving an alligator. Engaging shots combining background and foreground. And several moments where the characters are bathed in blunt, bloody red light.
In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I’ll just say that when it comes to the character motivations and how it connects to the bloodletting, this film actually has a very well-realized character arc for all of its major players. Time is taken to establish elements about Howard and Pearl that pay off later and keep them from being just random scary old people boogeymen. The movie even goes to a place not usually addressed in horror movies, and that’s the jealousy that older people can feel toward younger people not just of their youth/beauty, but of their potential and their experiences.
I also appreciated the film’s attitude toward its adult film stars. It’s able to poke a bit of fun at them, but doesn’t dehumanize them. There’s the old horror trope of the disposable, slutty character (and the male equivalent of the disposable bozo), but all of these people are the slutty ones, LOL, and none of them are disposable. They are all more or less likable, which adds emotional investment to their fates as the film progresses. It’s kind of a neat trick that this was a film where I cared about the characters even as I appreciated the over-the-top way that many of them were dispatched. I particularly liked the hard look that the film took at RJ, a man who rhapsodizes about the artistry of his film, but then has a little-boy meltdown when his girlfriend wants to participate. A lot of people have this unhealthy push-pull relationship with sexual personas, lusting after them and feeling contempt for them at the same time. The character of RJ calls out this dynamic and his bathtub breakdown was one of the funniest parts of the film for me.
Somehow, though, I didn’t quite get to a place of love with this one. I think that honestly, a big part of it was the decision to have Mia Goth also play Pearl in prosthetics and makeup. Why did they do this? The makeup, with all due respect to the people who surely worked very hard on it, looks like bad old-age makeup from the 80s. Howard and Pearl don’t look like real people. They look like younger people wearing a lot of prosthetics, and it’s perpetually distracting. There’s something about centering horror on someone elderly (and even emphasizing the “horror” of elderly bodies) and not even having an older person in that role that just feels off to me. I kept waiting for something to happen to justify it and . . . nope.
Altogether a fun film, but didn’t land quite as well as I hoped it would.