X Review: Ti West’s Texas Porn-Shoot Massacre Is More Tease Than Tantalizing

In an old episode of That ’70s Show, after discussing how horror movies “turn on chicks faster than porno,” Ashton Kutcher’s lunkheaded Michael Kelso wonders, “If only someone would make a porno-horror movie.” Writer-director Ti West’s X is most likely the kind of film Kelso had in mind: a slasher pic that endeavors to give audiences the goods in more ways than one. Call it The Texas Porn-Shoot Massacre, if you will.

The lurid meta-conceit of West’s film is that its central characters, who are making their way by van through the backroads of the Lone Star State, are themselves the crew of an adult film. And solidifying its homage to Tobe Hooper’s horror touchstone, X takes place in the late ’70s and similarly structures itself as one long night of terror in the expansive Texas brush.

This is where Wayne (Martin Henderson), an adult entertainment impresario, decides to set his latest venture, a porno flick called The Farmer’s Daughter. Along for the ride are Wayne’s much younger “future fiancée” and muse, Maxine (Mia Goth); seasoned on-camera performers Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson (Scott Mescudi); and cameraman RJ (Owen Campbell) and his girlfriend and sound operator, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega).

Upon arriving at their shooting destination, a ramshackle boarding house on an isolated farm, they’re initially greeted with hostility by Howard (Stephen Ure), the old shotgun-toting coot who owns the property. Meanwhile, Howard’s unstable wife, Pearl (also Goth, unrecognizable under heavy prosthetics), begins popping up spectre-like in the distance, fixedly staring and making creepy hand gestures. It’s obvious that things are not going to end well.

X basks in the free-wheeling nature of what it must have been like to shoot an independent porno during this time. Inspired by the crossover success of Debbie Does Dallas, Wayne and his crew-cum-dysfunctional-family want to create an industry game-changer that will bring them stardom. As the de facto director, RJ has aspirations of making a revolutionary art film, and he seeks to emulate the techniques of European cinema to do so. “Porn is no longer for the perverts,” Wayne declares, preaching about how the growing video market will finally allow anyone to watch what they desire in the privacy of their homes.

X vividly portrays the DIY-ness of like-minded types shooting a porno and taking the enterprise as seriously as an art film. Accordingly, the sex scenes are refreshing for their playfulness and focus on giving the women as much bodily autonomy as the men. In terms of commentary, the film isn’t exactly deep, but it does engage with thorny questions around the making of pornography, like when RJ freaks out at the mousy Lorraine’s sudden desire to act in a scene, even though he just wholeheartedly espoused the idea that what happens in front of the camera is purely make-believe. “She’s a nice girl,” RJ states to Wayne after storming outside in a huff, to which Wayne lasciviously replies, “None of them are nice girls.”

Once all hell breaks loose, though, the promise of a genre deconstruction all but evaporates. As the night stretches on and our heroes wander out alone on the property, they fully embody their stereotypes, making increasingly stupid decisions as they’re picked off in largely predictable ways. Luckily, West’s skill at springing galvanizing sequences is on impressive display—one involving a rogue alligator is all sorts of giddy—and he avoids the kind of sexualized violence that permeates the exploitation films of the past.

Still, X’s eventual slide into cliché is disappointing, doing a particular disservice to its most mesmerizing and rich character: Pearl. As the film’s bogeywoman, Pearl snaps when catching a glimpse of the porn shoot in progress and goes on the requisite killing spree, becoming obsessed with reigniting her own sexual vitality in the process. In one expertly prolonged scene that’s equal parts tender and downright dread-inducing, Pearl disrobes and gets into bed to cuddle with a sleeping Maxine. In a lighter context, the scene could be straight out of The Farmer’s Daughter, but West is after bigger fish, or so it seems at first.

The moment is abruptly shattered by Maxine, upon waking up, feeling immediate panic and disgust, and Pearl’s terror spree feels as if it’s going to be fully in service of disarming women’s anti-aging demon. But the exploration of Pearl’s repressed desires and whatever allegiance, psychic and otherwise, she feels toward Maxine—an impression underscored by the dual casting—stops there. (West also hints at religious fanaticism in Texas working to funnel the film’s characters into a spiral of sex and madness, but that, too, is given the short shrift.)

Instead, X opts to coast smoothly toward an action-packed climax that, while energetic, is strangely passionless in its execution, consequently rendering Pearl as a slasher villain every bit as blank as Jason Voorhees. While still intermittently thrilling as a basic retro-outfitted slasher, X ultimately comes off in a way that no porn (or horror) film should: like a tease.