Ti West’s new film evokes an era, the 1970s, like ‘Licorice Pizza’, but in terms of terror. She’s old on purpose and she looks great
The latest proposal from Ti West, a filmmaker who’s always been in the spotlight of horror fans — ever since he premiered “The House of the Devil” — starts with an Instagram-worthy image, treated with a vintage filter. The frozen frame of a rural postcard is rendered in a square format, as in the popular application, thanks to the placement of the frame that takes advantage of the door frame in a barn. This “Fordian” source serves to introduce the viewer to a world that evokes the genre cinema of the 70s from its own aesthetic.
The camera slowly moves out and we enter the present, although it is a different era displayed, appropriately staged. A powerful title, ‘X’ proposes a meeting between Linda Lovelace and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, as if cinema classics of yore were classified as ‘S’, along the lines of ‘Deep Throat’ or ‘The Devil in Miss Jones”, resulted in a slasher with care to provide an appealing look to today’s audience. The excuse is the arrival of a group of naive young people -three quirky couples-, determined to shoot a porn movie, lost at a boarding house in the countryside. It may not be the most suitable place. The farm owners who rent the secluded wooden house in the countryside have no idea what is brewing sweet home a few meters from their home. They may not like the visit. Maybe it awakens hidden instincts.
Written and directed by West, “X”, more than on television, struggles behind the camera by participating in the making of series such as “Them” or “Stories of the loop”, does not hide the fitness of exercise in the style of his latest work. On the contrary, he fully expresses the idea, in keeping with his irregular filmography, in which he previously paid tribute to horror films of the 80s. Here he finally manages to refine the aesthetic tics of an era and a tone of extreme artificiality to avoid. Beautiful, enveloping terror, portrayed with precise frames that emphasize the growing paranoia that infects the viewer as he watches the protagonists fall into a spiral of unexpected violence.
The film introduces restlessness little by little, through beautiful scenes of deep America, with the poetic use of music and a good use of zoom as in the 70s, when it was still believed that it was possible to shoot a quality porn film . long before Pornhub existed and monopolized a controversial market. A certain state of uncertainty takes over the images, with a suggestive atmosphere. While the protagonists are running the adult film (two strippers, a Vietnam veteran, a horny producer, a pedantic film director and his innocent girlfriend), the mystery simultaneously permeates the environment, using clever editing. Topics of X-cinema and horror cinema itself merge to the delight of the viewer free from prejudice, a lover of crossing genres in search of new ways of expression.
Behind ‘X’ is A24, an acclaimed American manufacturing company that has become a hallmark of quality for defenders of the ‘cult’ label. They appear in the credits of ‘Midsommar’, ‘The VVitch’ or ‘The Florida Project’. The beautiful retro visuals of ‘X’, whose sound design has been treated to recall the past, in keeping with the soundtrack, costumes, art and effects, fit perfectly with the catalog of this successful company.
Extremely stylish, apart from offering nudity and glorifying scenes typical of the genre, the film talks about sensuality and passion, how they can turn into something unhealthy, the inevitable passage of time and how desire is twinned with death when a knife stabbed into a body in anger is reminiscent of a sexual act. There’s no shortage of sharp phallic elements or an ending befitting the great classics of cinephile horror in this insinuating bet starring Jenna Ortega (‘Scream’), Brittany Snow (‘Pitch Perfect’), Martin Henderson (‘Everest’ ), Kid Cudi (“Don’t look up”) and Mia Goth (“The devil at all hours”).
Source: La Verdad
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