X (2022)

October has rolled around once more and that means it is time for the Horror Review challenge. For the third year running (Fourth including my pre-blog Facebook/Minds reviews), I’ll be reviewing a horror or horror adjacent movie every day for 31 days. First up is A24’s Porno gone wrong story “X” featuring two modern Scream Queens in Mia Goth (In a double role) and Jenna Ortega. But did the movie live up to they hype? Let’s have a look.

King of Average.

First thing to note here is that this is a Ti West movie. If you’ve been following my blog you will know I was not impressed at all with his “The Innkeepers” (2011). I am yet to watch “House of the Devil” (2009) or the prequel to “this “X”, “Pearl” (2022) both of which are fairly well regarded, so I’m not viewing this with especially high expectations. However, West certainly has a lot of experience in the genre having worked on many Horror based TV shows over the years. If I was to compare him to another director it would probably be Mick Garris. Competent, experienced, but not especially outstanding.

The premise is a fairly standard Horror affair. A small group of young people heading to a remote location, having lots of sex and getting picked off one by one. In this instance we’re in a 1970’s setting and they are in the location to shoot a porno. It’s a pretty similar set up to “Wrestlemaniac/El Mascarado Massacre” (2006), which isn’t a great sign since that was an awful movie. The key differences are this movie actually does show a lot of the porno side and instead of a crazed Rey Misterio Snr. killing everyone it’s two old farmers. Neither of these are really improvements!

It’s All About Mia

The movie relies a lot on trying to creep you out because the old people are old. That’s probably something that only really works on the younger audience, for me it just seemed a bit sad. Other than that there is a whole lot of sex and then about half an hour of standard slasher stuff. Mia Goth does stand out as the only characters with any real depth though the film essentially revolves around her so not surprise.

Jenna Ortega is totally wasted and the rest of the victims are generic and forgettable. The Villains meanwhile are not terribly believable, given their age and their motivation is a little off given they agreed to rent out their farmhouse to this group and then seem angry they are there. Admittedly they didn’t know they’d be shooting porn, but it still seems like their motivation is really: This is a horror film, we need to kill people.

Double Act

The only point of interest in the movie really comes from the focus on Mia Goth. The actress plays both the “Final Girl” and the primary psycho, two roles that are meant to parallel one another The only problem is the movie didn’t really need to have the same actress play that role to achieve that and doing so largely robbed the theme of it’s subtilty, while ensuring the only thing of value was Mia Goth. I can’t fault Goth’s performance though, it’s just the concept is a little on the nose.

Overall this is another clanger from West and I’m starting to wonder if his Modus Operandi is simply to make generic horror with obvious, “On the nose” themes. I will probably give “Pearl” a run next year or “House of the Devil” and see if West can finally convince me he has something to offer in the genre. If he does it’s certainly not with “X”. This is a 4/10 for me.