X

X
Original title:X
Director:Ti West
Release:Cinema
Running time:106 minutes
Release date:18 march 2022
Rating:
Late 1970s. A film crew moves to an isolated farm in Texas to shoot a pornographic film. Their hosts, an old reclusive couple, are particularly interested in the young guests. As night falls, this curiosity turns morbid and the crew members find themselves in a desperate struggle for survival.

Mulder's Review

Ti West is certainly a master of horror. Apart from the western In a Valley of Violence (2016) he has remained faithful to this genre in which he excels in creating films with a small budget but creating a real scary universe. Films like The House of the Devil (2009), The Innkeepers (2011) have established him as a director wishing to keep a real independence far from the diktats of the big Hollywood studios. His new film X is certainly his best to date and his way of paying homage to the horror films of the 70s, especially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), which X follows the same plot to better dynamite its concept from within.

The story takes place in 1979. We discover a group of young adults who went to Texas together to shoot an amateur pornographic film in an isolated farm. Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), who aspires to become a famous pornographic actress, her boyfriend and producer Wayne Gilroy (Martin Henderson), actors Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson Hole (Scott Mescudi), as well as director RJ Nichols (Owen Campbell) and his girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) make up the group, who want to take advantage of the booming video market to make a name for themselves and capture the attention of the public. Unfortunately for them, they are confronted with an old retired couple who are real psychopaths, as well as their curious pet in a pond they own. X not only tells the story of the making of an adult film, but is also a very violent slasher worthy of the cult film sagas such as Friday the 13th.

Ti West has no equal in creating a frightening universe in which horrific elements appear little by little. Whether it is a haunted house, monsters in the form of bats (The Roost). For his new film, he manages to simply explode the rules of the genre to start his film after the events we are going to discover and showing the many dead found in this old farm. The real action of the film takes place one day before the first scene of the film and brings the spectators to witness the horrific events that took place. In the focus of the film the director simply focuses on the violence in the cinema whether it is sexual or horrific and all this with a real director's eye that does not seem to obey any restrictive rules of the Hollywood studios. The result is a real auteur film far from the current horror cinema which seems to lack for most of the time a real originality. 

If X proves to be so effective it is because it benefits from the presence of two excellent young actresses, Mia Goth and Jenna Ortega. Their presence brings to the film a whole other dimension. The great weakness of many horror films comes from the absence of excellent actresses to carry the main roles. A director will tend to play the card of the extreme by betting on special effects than on the real consistency of an adequate cast. In the same way, Ti West has always taken care of his simplistic looking films to better focus on a refined aesthetic and thus give life to strong works. Without any hesitation, X is her best film to date and has had a successful theatrical run in the United States and has been praised by the press.

X is conceived as a real intense cinematographic experience and it is not a coincidence that its distribution in France is totally incomprehensible. Indeed, released in the United States on March 18th, we will have to wait until November 2nd to discover it in some theaters in France while its sequel was already released in the United States on September 16th. The extreme violence of some scenes and the fact that the American distributor A24 is not inclined to distribute broadcasting rights outside the United States have led spectators wanting to discover this film to turn to a video medium imported from the United States (available since last May 24). This should remind some of the distribution in France of Tobe Hooper's cult film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

X
Written and directed by Ti West
Produced by Ti West, Jacob Jaffke, Kevin Turen, Harrison Kreiss
Starring Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell, Stephen Ure, Scott Mescudi
Music by Tyler Bates, Chelsea Wolfe
Cinematography : Eliot Rockett
Edited by David Kashevaroff, Ti West
Production companies : Little Lamb, Mad Solar Productions
Distributed by A24 (United States)
Release date : March 13, 2022 (SXSW), March 18, 2022 (United States), November 2, 2022 France)
Running time : 106 minutes

Seen on September 9, 2022 at the Deauville International Center

Mulder's Mark: