It took about ten minutes of watching X in theaters on release day to determine this film needed a write-up. For those who aren’t aware, Ti West’s X is a 2022 genre-faithful horror flick which pays heavy tribute to 70s slashers, sexual liberation, and female objectification in film. Throughout the film, a good number of gruesome events occur - a man takes a pitchfork to the eyes, a woman’s arm is mutilated, and another is shot in the head. The film obviously conveys a deeper message throughout the violence (and does so expertly), but the main purpose of this review is not to pick apart the themes of aging, sexual concerns betwixt generations, or religious guilt. You can find those analyses via simple query into your favorite search engine. Instead, I will be talking about the theater-going experience in 2022, especially as it pertains to 70s horror.
The Exorcist (1973) is a series known to this website - I covered the Exorcist III in great length. In ‘73, when the film was originally released, it created an immediate moral panic which cruised through neighborhoods nation-wide. Several scientific papers have been published pertaining to the aptly-coined “cinematic neurosis” that the film caused, and claims of audience members experiencing heart attacks and sudden miscarriages percolated throughout news media. With the United States beginning an era of moral panic that would persist throughout the 80s, religious fear was a newer form of fright for the average viewing family. Just a single year later, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) addressed even the non-religious as it introduced one of the first hulking, nameless faces to terrorize the silver screen. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) would go on to be known to have movie-goers flee the theaters in disgust in countries where the film was not banned outright. Between The Exorcist (1973) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), a one-year span of time resulted in a spiritual moral/spiritual panic coupled with “untold violence” being presented to anyone who tried hard enough to find it - will nobody think of the children?
Luckily, moral panic and overreaction is often coupled with a loved return to grace. The Exorcist was the highest grossing R-rated film until 2017, a roughly 44-year stint at the top. It was inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2010 for its cultural significance, and it was overall a massive success. The same thing could be said for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) as it is definitely credited for shaping the slasher subgenre that movies like X (2022) would use as a well of inspiration. Those who actually viewed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) will know that the on-screen violence and gore was minimal. Both of these films were subject to some of the highest degrees of censorship when it came to admitting audiences - children were often never to be admitted, and several theaters warned that women may not be able to handle these topics. Though the general public has largely changed their opinions on these films today, they often still come with lasting ‘heavy’ reputations. The recanting of political damnation by national convention demonstrates how reactionary the 1970s was, just as horror filmography was truly evolving into what we know today.
Somehow, Ti West has created a microcosm of moral panic in 2022, and he did it using one of the most reactionary time periods in horror history - the 1970s. When I saw this film in a theater, it was largely laughed at whenever sensitive topics were explored. Sure, some moments in the film were intentionally humorous, but those moments never scored quite the amount of laughter as the portions with dead-serious horror. Well, that can’t be a good sign for a film, can it?
The moments where the audience laughed the hardest, much to my dismay, were the portions that included nakedness of the elderly. A few of these scenes were heartbreaking, as the two antagonists discuss feeling disgusted with themselves and inadequate for each other due to age and declining physical appearance. Some of these scenes also border on the line of sexual assault, as an elderly woman undresses and slides into bed with a much younger, unaware, sleeping woman. The audience was not laughing at “silly naked old people'', the audience was nervously laughing - uncomfortable with the silence, and unable to sit quietly around friends and family as certain scenes progressed. In my experience, people only do that when truly uncomfortable with the subject matter - a feeling which has become much more difficult to produce over the nearly 50 years since The Exorcist (1973). Audiences in 2022 are still clearly uncomfortable with sexuality, the human body, and frailty demonstrated on screen, and X (2022) pushes the audience to a psychological limit. However, this uncomfortable feeling and mild panic never crosses the line into offensive territory, a line toed so closely by Ti West you’d think he was the one who drew it in the first place.
While there is much more going on in X (2022) than the source-material-inspired moral panic feeling, it is perhaps the most noteworthy. Ti West not only cements his genre prowess (starting from the opening shot, which was exceedingly clever), he touches on the sociopolitical facades that we drew in the 1970s. This, coupled with fantastic pacing, interesting double-performances from Mia Goth, and an abundance of subtle and not-so-subtle subtext about sexuality, aging, and religion leads to one of the most interesting works of art I have personally encountered. Ti West has cemented himself as a genre superstar, and we should all feel lucky to see what era he takes us to next.
★★★★★
Maximilian Ripley
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