X movie review: Ti West’s slasher stalks the borders between horror movies and pornos for fresh targets

A burglar breaks into a house. A couple hires a babysitter for the night. A car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. A hitchhiker waits for a ride by the side of the road. A woman realises she is being spied on. Each of these could be a set-up for a classic horror movie. Each of these could also be a set-up for a porno. As Ti West suggests in X, his ode to low-budget filmmaking of all stripes, the two genres are more alike than different. The relationship between sex and violence is thorny. Dialogue is corny. Everyone is horny. VHS had made both more accessible in the 1970s, which saw the rise of the porn star and the scream queen. Both genres have a tendency to dehumanise its women before deifying them. Popularity has done little for either’s bad reputation. If they continue to be looked down upon, it’s because they evoke the most primal emotions: fear and arousal. Tension builds until released via bodily fluids in the money shot. The colour of the bodily fluid is where the essential difference lies. X marks the spot for blood, spunk, guts and laughs in a bracing spin on the bump-and-grindhouse thrills of days gone by. It is 1979. A ragtag cast and crew arrive at a remote farm in Texas with the intentions of making the next Debbie does Dallas, only to end up becoming the unwitting stars of the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as they get picked off one by one by the murderous elderly couple who own the farm. The X of the title alludes to the rating that was given to movies with extreme violence and/or explicit sex — before it was replaced by NC-17 in the US in 1990. The “little death” makes way for literal death in X. The recasting pivots around the dynamic between the final girl Maxine and the tormentor Pearl, both of whom are portrayed by Mia Goth in a terrifying yet tender dual role. Maxine is a coke-snorting porn starlet with Lynda Carter-sized ambitions. Pearl is a decrepit old woman who was once upon a time a dancer. If Maxine yearns for fame, all Pearl wants is a chance to feel young again. Each sees their anxieties and frustrations reflected in the other. Maxine and Pearl are different sides of the same coin: an object of desire and a desiring subject. While Maxine and the rest of the group embody the freedoms brought by the ‘60s and ‘70s, Pearl embodies previous generations’ bitterness over having missed out on the sexual revolution. If there is a movement that challenges traditional ideas, there is always a parallel one trying to counteract its impact. As porn and horror movies became their own industries in the ‘70s, so did televangelism. People could enjoy the word of God in the morning, and indulge their kinks at night. In the film, we see the fiery preachings of a Christian fundamentalist run all day on TV in the home of Pearl and her husband Howard (Stephen Ure). [caption id=“attachment_11300941” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] X - cast and crew[/caption] Due to Howard’s chronic heart condition, Pearl is however starved for intimacy. When she gets a peep at Maxine rolling in the hay with a co-star, it awakens her libido. Denied an outlet, she turns to her death drive. The turning point comes when she puts on make-up to look like Maxine, only to be rejected by Howard. The next scene of Maxine’s co-stars Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson Hole (Kid Cudi) performing Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” is intercut with a split-screen of Pearl wiping away the make-up. The lyrics, “Time makes you bolder/ Even children get older/ And I’m getting older too,” foreshadow the bolder outlet Pearl will choose to feel young again. In X, West plays on the deliberate artlessness of grindhouse and porn movies for a more artful examination of youth and aging, temptation and repression, and how moral panic manifests as hostility. What strikes the viewer about the porno-within-the-film, with its 16mm grain and sleazoid aesthetics, is how much it looks like it was made in the ‘70s. Its director is RJ (Owen Campbell), who believes it is possible to make “a good dirty movie” by classing it up with a “certain sense of the avant-garde.” The well-endowed Vietnam vet Jackson, the seasoned Southern belle Bobby-Lynne and the up-and-coming star Maxine make up the cast. Maxine’s boyfriend Wayne Gilroy (Martin Henderson) is the ringleader of the operation who is eager to keep costs at a minimum and capitalise on the mushrooming home video market. Rounding out the crew is RJ’s girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), who is the boom operator. As opposed to Maxine and Bobby-Lynne, Lorraine starts off a little naive, reserved and self-righteous. Not aware that her boyfriend was taking her on a production for a porno, she questions the morality of it all. But on recognising the subversive power of porn and how it affords Maxine and Bobby-Lynne the freedom to live life on their own terms, she too decides to get in front of the camera. Be it the ‘80s babysitter-in-peril throwback The House of the Devil (2009), the haunted-hotel thriller The Innkeepers (2011) or X, each film by West offers a glimpse into the mind of a veritable horror geek. He has a keen sense of horror movie history and a clear command of composition, length and pacing. The frights he invokes can be visceral (like in a scene when the group drives by the disembowelled carcass of a cow) or suspenseful (like when an alligator closing in on an unsuspecting Maxine who goes skinny-dipping in a pond). If the kills make our flesh creep, credit must go just as much to the build-up. Though X drinks from the well of so many retro horror movies, Texas Chainsaw Massacre being the most obvious, it never feels like a cheap imitation. Influences are dissected and reimagined for fresh ironies, as it embraces its own personality. Now, the question is: can the prequel about Pearl and the sequel about Maxine hit the same spot as X, push its mythology to bold new places, and keep the fun and frights coming? X is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .