Review: ‘X’ Has The X-Factor
“You’re a kidnapping, murdering sex fiend. I’m a star!”
If a new edition of Men, Women, and Chainsaws were to be issued today, it would probably include X as the contemporary example of Carol Clover’s ideas converging in a post-modern context. In her seminal essay, “Her Body, Himself,” Clover proposes the proximity of horror to pornography as two genres “specifically devoted to the arousal of bodily sensations” that “exist solely to horrify and stimulate.” These two genres are recognized as similar but distinct. While there are certainly porn films that evoke or parody the horror genre, in 1987 there wasn’t an example of a horror-first film that included pornography, only films that implied such through subtext. In 2022, we have a film that quite literally marries the two genres in Ti West’s X.
Down in Texas, a crew of six head out to the countryside to shoot a porno. One of the production’s stars, Maxine (Mia Goth), dreams of being the next major adult film star. Her husband and producer, Wayne (Martin Henderson), has equal ambition for his business-minded endeavors in the adult entertainment industry. Bobby-Lynn and Jackson Hole (Brittany Snow and Kid Cudi respectively) are two charismatic on-again, off-again lovers also starring in the film. And behind the camera we have RJ (Owen Campbell), a twenty-three year old film student who has lofty dreams of making the first great dirty picture, alongside his girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), the “good girl” church mouse who operates the boom mic.
The Farmer’s Daughters, the title of their production, takes place at a rural country homestead in the back parts of Texas, the setting for which they just so happen to find in an elderly couple’s property. Wayne and company rent the guest house and start their shoot unbeknownst to the couple — “Best ask for forgiveness instead of permission,” Wayne advises. As the day continues and with increasingly eerie encounters, the couple begins to catch on to the sexual deviancy taking place on their property, and when night comes, they take action.
X feels like a direct reading from Clover’s essay. A key element of her thesis is the idea that the slasher is propelled by “psychosexual fury,” with the killer going on murderous rampages as an outlet for their repressed sexuality. True to that thesis (and without spoiling too much), X makes its killer explicitly driven by this sexual frustration. Any subtext theorized by academia or fandom, particularly related to the sexual motifs of the slasher, has been brought to the surface here. Crucially, the film does not follow the path many post-modern slashers take, which is to use meta-textual nods as a way of being subversive. X is just a clever use of narrative that stays true to the slasher genre without eliciting the eye-rolls of lesser films.
Academic theory aside, X also happens to be a really exceptional horror flick. Categorically, it falls near smutty 70s exploitation and grimey 70s horror, think a lurid version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre without the horrific insanity. The cast of cannon fodder victims each carry their own weight with strong personalities and performances. The kills are well executed and satisfyingly gruesome (see it with a crowd if you can). And most importantly, there is a spark of creativity and originality to the film, which is no small feat given how leather-worn the slasher genre has become. As Maxine likes to proclaim in the film, “I’ve got the X-factor.” And so, too, does X.
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