Watching X felt like a nice hot shower after emerging from the mud bath that was Texas Chainsaw Massacre. X is clearly influenced by the 1974 original as well as other 70s’ horror exploitation films but it also has its voice with its own themes that’re contemporary and, at times, touching.

It’s 1979, a group of actors and filmmakers rent out a farmhouse in rural Texas to shoot an adult film, without the knowledge of their inquisitive hosts. When they uncover what their guests are filming, the young crew are forced to spend the night fighting for their lives.

The Characters

X knows its genre and peoples’ expectations of it. The film could’ve easily devolved into a shallow throwback to 70s’ gore films with nothing to contribute but aesthetics. Fortunately, X understands the conventions of the genre and period it’s working with.

Our characters, like those in many slasher and porn films of the 70s’, are pretty unlikable. They’re selfish, decadent, dishonest and hedonistic. So how do they make X any better than the films it’s inspired by? The answer is that they have purpose. You are not expected to like these people. They’re supposed to be narcissistic and self-indulgent because those behaviors and outlooks are the themes that X is interrogating.

These porn actors and filmmakers not only know that they’re glib pleasure-seekers, they’re proud of it. They know that they’ll be young and sexy for only a short time hence they embrace it while they can. This certainly doesn’t make them any more likable but unlike the characters in the films X is referencing, they have more depth and are a lot easier to understand as people.

The couple who let the farmhouse to the crew are their polar opposites. They are old and unattractive but share the same lust that the crew members are able to fulfill. If you’ve seen any 70s’ gore films you can probably guess what the elderly couple do to the crew but once again, unlike the antagonists of those gore films, they have dimension and are actually empathetic.

The Themes

X is about the social consequences of aging. When people are young and beautiful they are worshiped, but when their beauty starts to decay they almost become second-class citizens. Peoples’ worth depends on good looking they are. While this was definitely the case in 70s’ America, this philosophy is still relevant in the modern West of the 2020s’.

When Pearl, the elderly wife of the couple, watches the young actors perform it’s hard not feel for her. You see a common desire in her that she cannot achieve, purely because she’s a victim of time but who isn’t? Despite how unkind the crew are, you don’t enjoy what Pearl and her husband puts them through. You actually feel more sorry for them as you start to imagine the amount of alienation they must’ve experienced that pushed them to do what they’re doing.

I never thought I’d be saying this about a film that concerns a bunch of porn actors getting slaughtered in 70s’ Texas. The mise-en-scène is of a genre that is renown for being shallow, incompetent and silly yet the screenplay has so much substance.

If you’re a horror fan then X is a must see. If you haven’t gathered from my review, it gives you so much more than you expect. It is undoubtedly a gory 70s’-style extravaganza but at the same time it gives you a story that actually ends up staying with you. I highly recommend it.

I give X a brilliant and surprising 9 out of 10.