Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Ti West
Starring: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany
Snow, Scott Mescudi, Owen Campbell, Stephen Ure
Some sources like to cite Tobe Hooper's
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as the first slasher movie.
I've always felt that while the slasher genre has more obvious roots in
the Italian gialli and German Krimis of the 1960s, Hooper's film belongs
to a much older American tradition, one that stretches back to 1930s
pre-code films like The Most Dangerous Game and
The Island of Lost Souls. I like to call these films "hostile host horrors" as they feature
protagonists who often wash up at an out of the way locale and find
themselves ultimately menaced by those they intruded on. Many of the
early cinematic examples of this form were adapted from Victorian era
stories penned by writers contending with the ills of colonialism. It's
perhaps no surprise that hostile host horrors saw a major revival during
the Vietnam War era, with rural America standing in for the jungles of
South East Asia, unwelcoming rednecks substituted for the Viet Cong.
Given how the US civil war was the first of many times Americans decided
to liberate a people only to find their presence unwelcome, it makes
sense that rural America, i.e. the South, would serve as the prime
locale for such films.
In 2022, the division between urban and rural America is so culturally
wide that such metaphors are no longer necessary today. Director
Ti West may be recalling the hostile host horrors of the 1970s
with his new film X, but it's very much window dressing for an examination of one of
today's curious cultural cold wars, that being fought by the
generations.
Until quite recently, nobody defined themselves by their generation.
Now it's not uncommon to see young people wield the labels "boomer" and
"millennial" as an insult against their elders. While young people have
become more liberal than their predecessors in some aspects, one area
where they've regressed into conservatism is how repulsed they seem to
be by the idea that anyone over the age of 40 might still enjoy
sex.
West cleverly examines this curious dynamic by pitting the cast and
crew of a 1979 porn flick against an elderly Texan couple. We expect a
clash between the liberal minded porn gang and the conservative
geriatric farm folks, but what we get is more complicated. Producer
Wayne (Martin Henderson, channeling Matthew McConaughey) strikes
a deal with an ancient farmer, Howard (a heavily made up
Stephen Ure), to film his latest epic on his farm, unbeknownst to
the old codger. When the banging begins, it stirs the loins of Howard's
wife (Mia Goth in rubbery make-up), who sets her sights on
ambitious porn starlet Maxine (Goth sans make-up).
There's a delicious irony in how sexually liberated Maxine markets
herself, while finding the idea of a 90-year-old woman having lustful
feelings truly repellant. It's an old cliché that slasher villains like
to target young people for having sex, but here the trouble begins
because a young person wasn't as liberated as they believed themselves
to be.
Thus sets off a final act in which the farmer's wife begins to butcher
our young protagonists. West doesn’t find the most original means of
offing his cast, liberally borrowing from the '70s movies he's aping
here. But there's a scuzziness to his film that genuinely recalls such
films, right down to the sometimes creaky pacing.
Its commentary on inter-generational warfare aside,
X doesn't have any political agenda to bludgeon the viewer
with, and it's refreshing to see an American horror filmmaker happy to
make an old-fashioned movie in which a bunch of good looking people are
butchered by rednecks. With nods to Texas Chainsaw and Hooper's
follow-up Eaten Alive, transitions borrowed from Easy Rider and liberal use of
a zoom lens, West has created a nostalgic tribute to a classic era of
screen sleaze. It's certainly a better Texas Chainsaw movie than any of
the recent entries in that long-suffering franchise.
