The starter week of Female Led Horror is getting capped with the full Ti West X trilogy of horror films, starting with the first one. The movie garnered a lot of attention when it came out and also got compared to Texas Chainsaw Massacre quite a bit, which is probably why I ended up not really wanting to see it initially as one of the rare horror fans that has never particularly cared for that film. However, I was interested to see how the movie would take the grimy slaughterhouse of TCM and combine it with the porno aesthetic the movie was going for.

The movie takes place in 1979, where a group is heading out to a farm in rural Texas in order to shoot a porn that they hope will make them famous ala Debbie Does Dallas. Everyone is fully invested in making this movie a hit but nobody more so than Maxine, who is determined to be a star and have everything she wants in life. The small farmhouse they are using is owned by a strange elderly couple that the group is trying to avoid so as not to tip them off to what they are using the property to do. They will have much more to worry about than trying to bang while the lighting is good once they start going missing and the bodies start piling up but not in a sexy way.

I can definitely see the reasons people would compare this to Texas Chainsaw beyond just being a slasher set in Texas during the 70’s. The elderly couple’s house has that same feel to it if not quite the same orgy of grotesquery that TCM’s did. Many of the shots and scenes feel reminiscent of it but the main difference is that X has so much better pacing, characters, and composition that you can’t help but be sucked into it. It’s almost an hour before you get any murder or anything in this film but the drama between the characters and the the way the movie juxtaposes youth and age is so well done that you almost don’t even care. If the movie didn’t start with a straight up walk through of the eventual crime scene, you might not even realize you were watching a horror film until it turns.

I also understand why Mia Goth ended up getting so much buzz after this film. Playing the part of both Maxine and Pearl, the old woman, is kind of astounding. I would absolutely never think that they were the same person. How she moves, talks, obviously looks, and everything is so different that even the scenes when they are right next to each other and interacting, you can’t tell. She completely loses herself in the role of Pearl here and it’s made me look forward to watching the prequel next when I otherwise didn’t really care. That isn’t to say everyone else doesn’t do an amazing job. There really isn’t a weak performance in the bunch and everyone takes what could have been a very one dimensional role and makes it feel real.

Delightfully surprised by this one. I liked it much more than I assumed I would and I’m looking forward to the rest of the trilogy now.

Score: 4 out 5