“X” (2022) is about a group of aspiring pornographers who drive to an isolated Texas farmhouse to use it as the shooting location for their X rated film unaware that they have stumbled into a horror. The prequel/sequel, “Pearl” (2022), was shot soon after “X” and should be watched together. “MaXXXine” is in production.
I was tempted to see “X” when it was initially released in theaters. I enjoy Ti West’s work: “The Innkeepers” (2011) and “The Sacrament” (2013). The porn premise ultimately dissuaded me. I began to regret my life choices after “Pearl” was released. The Brattle has showcased both films as a double feature two times in 2023 to date, and I ran out to see it at the first opportunity after a long virtual court day.
Every critic references “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974) when talking about “X.” Since I am so late to the game, let’s skip it. Even though porn is prevalent, the media that links the different times and locations in this film is a televangelist filmed in a small church (Simon Prast) preaching against people of the filmmakers’ ilk, blaming secular society for all crime and losing his daughter to that lifestyle. In a sense, he is the real star, Must See TV. Are we adhering to the same formula of sex equals death? Yes and no. The filmmakers only are in danger because of their aspirations and when they become divided. Those who remain faithful to their dream, survive, but it also can turn them into the monsters that they are fighting. The film feels like an ouroboros and repeat viewings of the movie will make you realize that the film told you exactly what was going to happen if you were paying attention. The following includes spoilers for both movies.
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Set in 1979, West starts the film with the “How We Got Here” framing narrative, which I normally hate, but it works here. We know that we are watching a horror movie, and he is inviting us to the mayhem the day after it was unleashed. The edges of the barn doors act as the theater curtains then the camera pushes forward to allow us to enter the outdoor space then this substitute visual framing disappears as we get literally pushed into the film. We only see the disgusted reaction shots of the police officers evaluating the crime scene, but not the actual carnage so we do not know who is going to die or live. This film is shot the way that films in the 1970s were shot. The environment is still verdant but drab, decaying and dying.
Then West transports us back in time to a dressing room to see adult entertainers before they board their van, marked “Plowing Service” on the side. The camera pulls back to reveal that this strip club is in the middle of an inhospitable industrial area. The van holds the film crew, RJ (Owen Campbell who often plays the worst boyfriend in this and “Depraved”), the director who wants to make “a good dirty movie” with French film ambitions, RJ’s girlfriend, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), who wears a necklace with a cross, the actors, Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow), a smart pro who knows the business behind and in front of the camera, Maxine (Mia Goth), who is desperate to be a star and the producer’s fiancé, Jackson (Scott Mescudi), another actor, and in the driver’s seat, the producer, Wayne (Martin Henderson)—think an undiscovered, aging Matthew McConaughey type who still takes care of himself.
This section reminded me of “Red Rocket” (2021)-the delusion of the American dream. During a frank exchange between Wayne and Bobby-Lynne, the oldest members of the dreamers, they reveal that they are painfully aware that if this scheme does not work, they could have a future of hard labor. Maxine and RJ are the only ones who still believe that they can make it. Everyone ignores the warning signs, and it is understandable. Who would not prefer a farm over a foul-smelling city. The danger starts when it rapidly cuts to a cluster of cows standing on grass in front of the road and the interior of the van full of filmmakers passing them. They are cattle going to the slaughter except the cow just dies because of location, not to serve any grand purpose, just as they will. Wrong place, wrong time.
They get a second warning when Howard (Stephen Ure), the farmer who owns the location, greets Wayne with a shotgun. Only one person notices the danger and prepares to take the lead in defense. RJ and Wayne only see potential in the dilapidated quarters.
History of place and people become important, specifically war. The quarters were originally made for soldiers in the Civil War. The farm is in Texas so these soldiers would be Confederates, and they would have separate quarters in the hope that they would not seize the home. Then Jackson mentions serving in the Vietnam War. Howard finds no common ground with Jackson despite their shared service. Wayne tries to smooth things over with cash, but Howard hates them. Wayne correctly assesses Howard’s motivations, envy and impotence, just as he intuits Lorraine’s silence as interest, not disapproval, which makes his obliviousness to danger more shocking.
West alternates between the filming of the porn, “The Farmer’s Daughter,” with the events happening outside. When you see “Pearl,” you will retroactively appreciate why Howard does not want them to bother his wife, and why Pearl (Mia Goth), Howard’s wife, wants the opposite. West again rapidly cuts from the interior of the cabin after a film shoot to an overhead shot of Maxine floating in a nearby lake oblivious to danger. These rapid alternating cuts almost feel like errors with the reel but are intentional to alert viewers. West uses this editing style to punctuate action.
West alternates from the porno of the older daughter welcoming the stranger to Pearl beckoning Maxine to come inside her home. The daughter and Pearl offer their guest lemonade, and they both have designs on their guest. In a porn, the goal is sex with the stranger, but Pearl touches Maxine’s skin after showing Maxine a wall of old photos, which reveals the resemblance between the two women. Pearl wants something impossible—to be Maxine, a dead ringer for a young Pearl, or her youth and beauty. Maxine does not know this, but senses the danger. Pearl is a cautionary tale to Maxine that Maxine does not want to heed—she will not be famous, will age and die in obscurity. “I will not accept a life I do not deserve.” Yeah, Maxine, but what do you deserve? You got scammed into pornos by some dude who is making money off your work. Sure Maxine gets further than Pearl ever did, and the porn feels like a direct mockery of Pearl’s life, hopes and dreams. The real horror is age and death of potential/possibility. Even if Pearl wanted to join in, she cannot. It is the horror trope of the doppelganger meets the art history theme of death and the maiden, the kiss of death or aging, “de tand des tijds” in Dutch, a reminder of mortality, which dates to the 16th century with Hans Baldung Grien’s original from 1518 to Jiri Anderle’s 1936 version. Death is the seducer, Pearl, and attempts to embrace the pale white woman, Maxine. We see echoes of this in artwork with skeletons near beautiful women looking in mirrors, but in “X,” that image gets combined with Pearl looking into the mirror and brushing her hair, which cannot withstand the attention.
My favorite scene is the moment of solidarity when the pornographers call themselves a “sexy car wreck” that people cannot stop watching. “One day we’re gonna be too old to fuck…We turn folks on, and that scares ‘em.” They then cheer to having fun until they die, “the power of independent cinema” and “to living life on our own terms and never accepting what self-righteous naysayers have to say.” Afterwards we get a split screen of the cabin and Pearl sitting alone in her house. If she scares Maxine, they scare her too—their existence proves that she may have chosen the wrong path. “It ain’t my fault that you didn’t live the life that you wanted.”
And they do not have fun until they die. The dynamic changes when Lorraine crosses the lines from crew to talent. RJ goes from calling her a prude to becoming one and becomes the weak link that gets everyone killed by pulling away from the group and becoming a self-righteous naysayer and hypocrite, crying naked in a shower. He tries to abandon them by taking the van, with the radio playing “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” but Pearl kills him when he rejects her sexual advances, an audition to be in the movie, another rejection for her last gasp at being a star. After Pearl kills him, the lighting turns red, and she uses the headlights as her stage spotlight to dance.
The ones most vulnerable to Pearl are those who have the least sex and/or least commitment to the dream/more awareness of the outside world or normal morals—being solicitous of older people, which explains the death order: Wayne as the producer, Jackson as a vet, Bobby-Lynne as a thinker aware of her precarious spot in the spotlight, and Lorraine the second that she becomes as much of a moralistic prick as her boyfriend. After you see “Pearl,” you will realize why each one triggers Pearl or why she sees them as the enemy. I also think that it is important not to forget that this old couple has been victimizing young men for ages to satisfy Pearl’s sexual urges, which explains Howard’s resentment; thus the stripped dead man in the basement.
Maxine, in her coverall shorts, survives because she wants to make it and abandoned morals a long time ago. She is a zealot, a true believer in secular society. Pearl never escaped society’s trap and begrudgingly accepted its standards by keeping her deviant desires hidden. While she may not be as messed up as Pearl, Maxine is a coked up, fame hungry person who rejected societal norms a long time ago. When Maxine scrubs herself down after Pearl touches her, it reminded me of “Tar” (2022). Self-defense by hurting older people will not make her lose sleep, and the final fight cracked everyone in the audience up from the heart attack to the van crushing a head. With the knowledge of a sequel, has self-defense triggered a homicidal impulse? Ordinarily I would say no, but the combination of wanting to be a star and becoming aggressive when someone looks at her seems foreboding. She can run, but she cannot escape death.
If I have one issue with “X,” it is not seeing the through line between this Howard and the glimpse of the horrified Howard whom we see in “Pearl” coming home from WWI. Is it WWII that did it? Or is Howard a symbol of the special danger that black soldiers had to face during the Vietnam War-the enemy behind the lines, the fellow soldiers? What alerted the authorities to the massacre? It was not Maxine.
I also love that the authorities had no idea what happened. A lot of movies from the 1970s showed government as professionals devoted to work with all the answers whereas the reality was Nixon. Was a black man as sheriff in a Texas small town an anachronism? He seems like a symbol of hope, a narrator who will wrap up the story for us, but nope.
