X
A homage to horror takes itself far too seriously to be serious fun or seriously scary.
Lone Starlets: Owen Campbell, Brittany Snow, Mia Goth, Scott Mescudi and Jenna Ortega
The title becomes apparent from the moment the classification warning flashes up on the screen. Here there be "strong bloody violence, gore, sex and sexual threat” – although there’s a lot more besides. However, such adult material only works if the other grown-up stuff is thrown into the mix. Stuff like recognisable human characters with genuine world problems would help, along with the conversation to match. Older viewers may get a sort of nostalgic charge from the proceedings, as Ti West’s latest horror opus is a slavishly loyal homage to the slasher pics of the late Seventies. The year is 1979 and the location a Texas backwater, two factors that signal an almost inevitably bad time for the film’s sextet of fun lovers with their careless, irresponsible city ways.
However, Ti King – whose prequel to X is already in the can – takes his reverence to ludicrous extremes, aping not only the low-budget production values but the sluggish pace of such slasher quickies. To drive the point home, West opens his film in the old Academy ratio, before pulling back to reveal a dilapidated farmhouse framed by three police cars. The patrolmen are at the scene of a particularly gruesome crime and so the film jumps back twenty-four hours, as these things often do.
Three young couples are in the Texas countryside to make a cheap porno as, not only is it “possible to make a good dirty movie” per the director (Owen Campbell), but the home video market is about to explode. And four of the six are really into sex, the only apparent prudes being the director (who sees this as a stepping stone to the Nouvelle Vague) and his girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega, from Scream), who is the sound recordist. The nominal lead, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth, from Suspiria), can get it on, but only if her nose is full of coke. It is unfortunate, then, that the elderly owners of the farm, for all their doddery physicality, are fervently religious Bible bashers.
There are glimmers of possibility amongst the drawn-out clichés, such as a blackly comic chuckle at the expense of geriatric desire. Poor old Farmer Howard (Stephen Ure) has a dicky heart and is unable to provide his ancient wife with the satisfaction she craves. So she looks elsewhere – to what should have been hilarious results. But the comic timing is so askew that one can but titter in empathy and feel rather sad for the old duffers. Just imagine what the Scandinavians would have done with the same material.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell, Stephen Ure, Scott Mescudi, James Gaylyn.
Dir Ti West, Pro Ti West, Jacob Jaffke, Kevin Turen and Harrison Kreiss, Screenplay Ti West, Ph Eliot Rockett, Pro Des Tom Hammock, Ed David Kashevaroff and Ti West, Music Tyler Bates and Chelsea Wolfe, Costumes Malgosia Turzanska, Sound Graham Reznick, Dialect coach Rick Lipton.
Little Lamb/Mad Solar Productions/Bron Studios-Entertainment Film Distributors.
106 mins. USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 18 March 2022. Cert. 18.
