X (2022)

... there'd be plenty of flesh and gore and comical carnage to see, with disfigured torsos, extreme loss of blood flow, and attempts to escape but not being able to quite flee.

... and it would be better than this.

Fmovies: This movie was just a bunch crap strung together with random scenes meant to try to make it seem better than it is.

The first half of the movie nothing happens (6 people make a porno) and is entirely unrelated to the second half.

There's a musical interlude for no reason. I can only guess it's there because Brittany Snow, from Pitch Perfect is in it and she wanted a chance to sing.

Then, 2 old people, who can barely seem to move, end up slaughtering everyone, for basically no reason. I guess they're just supposed to be crazy insane. (not a spoiler as it's in the trailer)

I liked It Follows. I can't say I liked Color Out of Space but it at least liked that it was trying something different. I didn't like Brightburn. I loved Green Room. I hated this movie!

I really liked the premise and the trailer looked decent but the film is garbage. Besides the horrible sex and poor casting for most of the cast, the mellow drama between a few characters and the sudden change of the quiet girl to I wanna be in the porno really negatively affected the film.

What sinks the flick though is who does the killing, I'm not going to say much more but it's completely far fetched and unbelievable. If these young people can be taken out this way then they surely deserved it.

I will say there are some creepy/sick moments but not in a gorey/blood soaked way, I'm sure you'll agree if you watch it... Unless you like that sort of thing.

X fmovies. 5/10 - while it was nice to see Brittany Snow on the big screen again after the Pitch Perfect movies and it continued Jenna Ortega's Hollywood takeover, this utterly bizarre, inconsistent, and incomplete attempt at a "sexy slasher" starts off strong but a few moments aside, becomes utterly laughable in the last 45 minutes.

My expectations were quite high for this film ... After watching it , I just don't understand what's all the hype is about ? To call it mediocre is to make a compliment ! Slow , predictable , not very clever horror , which is not even a horror , just an unrealistic portrayal of mayhem based on sex... Highly not recommended !

Ti West's movie really should have been called "E" for elevated. It sets itself up as a smart take on the slasher films of the 70s and early 80s. As a bonus, the film within a film has the filmmakers making an 'elevated' porn flick (as a bonus, actor Owen Campbell who plays the "Director" even looks a bit like Director Tobe Hooper).

Quite consciously taking it's set up from Tobe Hooper's 1974 TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, X has a group of randy pornographers renting a farmhouse from an elderly couple in the middle of nowhere in Texas (actually New Zealand). Writer-Director West's main idea here is to set up a contrast between the XXX filmmakers and the bible thumping civilians of the area. It's not an uninteresting idea, which, of course, plays off the the puritanical cliche in the slasher films of yore where the most sexually active characters are the most likely to g et killed off. In addition to MASSACRE, West includes nods to FRIDAY THE 13TH, Hooper's EATEN ALIVE and a very specific one to HALLOWEEN. X is set about 5 years after MASSACRE so that it can include a brief exchange about how home video will change the porno industry (adult films were already available on VHS for about 3 years).

The movie is very well directed, with savvy use of cross-cutting between the porn film in the making and the terrors that await the group. Mia Goth (in a dual role; actually a triple if you stay after the credits) and Brittany Snow are the two pornstars to be and each dive in with relish. Kid Cudi is the cocky stud, while Martin Henderson is solid as the confidant Producer. Jenna Ortega is the "crew" all by her lonesome (she manages to keep her clothes on - must have a better agent). Stephen Ure is the ornery old man who rents out his guest house.

As good as the filmmaking is, X ends up feeling too studied. The pacing is lugubrious even if it picks up towards the very end. Once the massacre begins (if not by power tools) it still ends up being fairly typical of the films it's commenting on, regardless of how well executed and 'elevated' it thinks it is. It's also too drawn out to satisfy some gore-hounds and once the blood starts flowing, probably too gross for the internet scribes dreaming of doing extended online essays dissecting it for it's elevated intellect. There are a couple of twists, but they aren't sufficient enough to compensate for the predictability.

In the end, it's not as clever as West thinks it is, and despite some good Directing chops and acting, it's simply too self-conscious to be much of a fun thrill ride.