I love film-in-film movies. ‘X‘ – the 2022 film from director Ti West – is a horror film set during the filming of a pornographic film in 1979. Ti West manages – in my opinion – to make a smart and surprisingly nostalgic film about the era in which the story takes place and about the low-cost cinema industry of those times, but at the same time he makes a shasher that will also satisfy the fans of this cinematographic genre. True, they have to wait until almost halfway through the film, when the action really kicks in and the blood starts flowing, but what happens from here on out will fully satisfy their expectations. Quality nostalgic film and extreme horror rarely meet and work together, but here we are dealing with one of those cases.
The film has eight characters. Six of them are the members of a film team looking for a low-cost location for the filming of an adult movie and find it in an unused building on a farm in the vastness of Texas, owned by an old couple with an unsettling physiognomy and with a rather hostile behavior, which should accentuate the doubts of young people. As in most genre films, the audience is much more aware of the dangers than the protagonists. The members of the filming team – an avant-garde director looking for work at any cost, his girlfriend – a nice and shy girl, at least at first -, two actresses and a porn actor and the producer – enthusiastically launch into filming, without paying attention to the effect that their behavior has on the elderly. Indifference will cost them.
Ti West faced a challenge: making a film about low-cost cinema with low-cost means, but which doesn’t look low-cost. I think that he was well inspired and cinematographically succeeded in a big way. First of all, he chose his actors very well – seven actors for eight roles, because yes – there is a double role that surprises most of the viewers, I think, as it surprised me. The visuals are excellent and the dual use of high-dive footage creates remarkable effects. Alternating between screen formats, West switches cinematic styles between those practiced in 1979 and 2022. The soundtrack offers a veritable anthology of the music that any youngster knew and loved in the 70s. A word of warning, though. There will be viewers who will not like everything that can be seen on the screen in this movie. Those who avoid gory horror films will do well to avoid ‘X‘, and so should do those who can’t stand nudity or sex in movies. These didn’t bother me, I consider them part of the cinematic convention. Instead I felt less comfortable with turning old age into a source of horror. I find it problematic, but maybe I should also see the ‘prequel’ (‘Pearl’) – released six months after this film, also directed by Ti West and co-written with the excellent actress Mia Goth who appears in both films – in order to have a complete perspective. Rumors go that a sequel is in making, so ‘X‘ has a chance to become a new series of horror films, but – I hope – not an ordinary one. With all the reservations and questions raised by this movie, I will watch it.