Xs Genre Massacre I love the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I love it for its idiosyncrasies, its low budget ingenuity, its colorful villains, its charming flaws. That being said, I would not describe the Texas Chainsaw Massacre as high art. It is effectively schlock, good schlock, but schlock none the less. Schlock works when it is fun and creative, when it engages the viewer in its excesses. Schlock can, however, be elevated by a dedicated artist's vision, and that is what X attempts to do. It takes an established style and plot structure from B-movie horror of the past, now nostalgic in its appeal, and attempts to do three things, pay homage to those classics, elevate the material through artistic directing techniques not contemplated by the older films, and to talk about societies relationship to sex, youth, and religion in broad strokes. On all three accounts X is a failure.
The film is not wholly without charm. Mia Goth is fantastic as the lead and the rest of the performances are solid. There are some beautiful shots, and the director has the courage to take some real chances with how he presents the intentionally textbook material. That is where my praise ends.
The heart of the film is disappointing. Beautiful shots are ruined by the films tedious attempts to foreshadow its overbearing message. A perfect example is when Mia Goth's character, alone, goes for a swim in some stagnant water that is serene, yet ominous. Up to this point the film has been cultivating a relatively tense atmosphere through uncomfortable interactions with an elderly couple who owns the property where the rest of the characters are trying to surreptitiously film a porno. The scene didn't need blatant danger to feel creepy, but it instead elects to add a crocodile slowly following the main character bluntly foreshadowing danger in an incredibly cheap and contrived way. She is prey, and yet any audience member already knows that. They know X is a horror film. They know the old couple is evil because they are put in so much makeup and prosthetics that they hardly look human. The film is not clever when it moves slowly and blatantly shouts what it is attempting to do.
Combined with the otherwise banal plot it's telegraphed unfolding, X also has much to say about sex, religion, and personhood, but it is so shallow in its interpretations of these concepts. In trying to be deep in comes across as shallow.
Spoiler ahead, but the elderly woman's bloodlust is essentially fueled by her inability to feel desirable since she has aged. Her husband can no longer play the part of her romantic lover as the way she needs. She longs for the youth that the other characters have, and all the sexual and personal freedom it gives. The gang, on the other hand, are young and cocky and seek to leverage their youth to gain wealth and fame. They are vain people who are pretending to have deeper connection than they actually have (one girl talks about faking her interest during scenes, while the head honcho talks about all women being the same, etc., the film is never subtle). Mia Goth's character, while the softest spoken, still harps about how she wants to be successful above all else, like she deserves the fame she believes appearing in pornography will bring.
The commentary here completely lacks nuance. These people don't inspire sympathy, but they don't deserve their fate. The film seems to critique old conservative forms of sex, yet the main thrust of the film is that making a porno and youthful hubris gets many people killed. The main character leaves the carnage at the end, but rather than relief at a quick getaway (a la Texas Chainsaw Massacre) she feels like John Wayne esq hero leaving victorious, which made little sense. To make matters worse the kills are boring. I found the first murder unbearably artsy in a way that felt unearned, and the rest were total duds, with one possible exception. The film wants to make art of gruesome murders, but also kills a lot of people in very anticlimactic and visually unappealing ways (quick gunshots, underwater and unseen deaths).
Maybe some people will be taken with the shot composition and retro feel combined with a modern shooting style, but in my opinion a film needs a lot more than vapid exploration of themes along with a nostalgic style to be interesting or entertaining.
X's ultimate sin is it lacked the charm of the slashers of the past, and in trying to innovate within the genre completely missed the point of it.