The movie “X” directed by Ti West was released March 18 and has become one of the most talked about movies since. The movie is a slasher thriller film starring Mia Goth as the upcoming adult film star Maxine Minx, and Jenna Ortega as Lorraine, acoustics director and girlfriend of RJ, played by Owen Campbell.
The movie begins with a group of filmmakers and actors in rural Texas looking for a place to create a series of adult videos, and they end up stumbling upon a ranch owned by an elderly couple by the names of Howard and Pearl. Howard rented out the guest house without Pearl’s knowledge, and the young crew had to hide and stay away from the main house. The couple, RJ and Lorraine, end up getting into a fight due to Lorraine wanting to act in one of the adult videos titled “The Farmer’s Daughters” and RJ being opposed to the idea.
Lorraine appears in the video and later in the night, RJ makes plans to leave the house but unfortunately encounters Pearl, ending his life and making the first kill of the movie. The rest of the crew then is woken up by a frantic Lorraine and go out to look for her whilst Pearl and Howard take everyone out, with the exception of Maxine. By the end of the movie, Maxine is the last surviving main character, giving in to the “Final Girl” trope but with a twist.
The “Final Girl” stereotype is always the pure, innocent and virginal sole surviving girl in a movie, typically in thriller and slasher films. Maxine was a very interesting and different choice for this trope, with her counterpart being Lorraine, who at the beginning of the movie looked down on Maxine and her fellow movie starlet friend Bobby-Lynne. Lorraine’s boyfriend RJ was keen on making the movies a work of art, and Lorraine who worked the sound equipment was very unimpressed. She is not pure, innocent and virginal like these girls usually are, which gives a nice refresher in the sense that we do not see this typical stereotype of the “Final Girl”.
The cinematography of the film was fun and interesting because throughout the film, as the characters were making their movies, the perspective of the camera changed so we did not see the characters filming but only the final product. The way the movie was filmed made many scenes uncomfortable and caused the watcher to feel uneasy, which worked perfectly for a slasher thriller-themed movie. In fact, the film has some homages to 20th century slasher films, specifically “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.
The acting performances were spectacular by some, such as Mia Goth and Brittany Ann Snow, and mediocre by others, like Jenna Ortega and Martin Henderson. Goth and Snow played their roles perfectly, in a way that was not over exaggerated such as Ortega’s performance was. From the accents to the way the characters talked and moved, Goth and Snow captured their roles sublimely. The characters being two girls with a southern accent and girly, confident attitudes, they were portrayed by the actresses perfectly, while Ortega’s character Lorraine was over exaggerated and irksome.The character’s accent was not accurate to the goal, which was a southern drawl, and the performance put on by Ortega just felt off throughout the entire movie in contrast to that of her peers.
Overall, the plot of the movie “X” was greatly paced and well written. It is easy to tell that each character had a lot of thought put into them, with the clothes, accents, lines and even their deaths.
