It’s a pretty good rule of thumb that if you’re making a horror movie and you’re also doing a prequel origin story for that movie’s villain before it even gets released, you better be damn sure you’ve come up with a damn good one that’s more compelling Villain. Not that there was any established precedent for this — it would be akin to Paramount ordering a Pamela Voorhees prequel months before Friday the 13th, which would have proved a box office success — but I suppose there is now gives. As you may have heard – you may even have seen the teaser trailer after the credits – Ti West is already making a prequel to his slasher film xwith A24 gave him the green light to return there with his crew and film pearl, a prequel centered around the villain we hadn’t even met at the time. Filming on Pearl has already wrapped up, with the 1918 prequel film listed by A24 as “coming soon”… probably even later this year.
No, that wasn’t some grindhouse-style faux-trailer you were treated to as a final post-credits treat for supporting X in theaters. This is a real movie. And Ti West has hinted that the world of X might even expand with a third film, making this a trilogy.
It’s a big move from both West and A24, who trusted West’s vision for the world of X so much they didn’t even need to see box office receipts before giving him more money to jump 61 years into a sequel do. But having seen X myself, it’s not too difficult to understand their decision-making process. Because with X, West has actually developed a convincing villain that is worth developing further.
There are many things about X that aren’t exactly surprising. Staying true to West’s track record of starring in horror films like The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers and The Sacrament in the Rear View, X is another slow burn variety horror film that seethes with suspense and character before exploding into a wild Onslaught of violence and, quite frankly, bizarre choices not often found in mainstream genre releases these days. West’s X plays out like a throwback to a time when horror movies were just that little bit crazier, and the entire experience feels like a lost movie from a grindhouse sequel we never got. Or, as others have put it, even quite like a lost Tobe Hooper film from the 1970s – the comparisons to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Eaten Alive are certainly understandable.
The point is that Ti Wests X has a lot of things you probably expected it to be. What’s most surprising about the film, however, has nothing to do with the graphic, hands-on violence we’ve come to expect from West, or the slow-burn approach that’s become a hallmark of his work. It’s also not surprising that there’s a fair amount of nudity in the film, both male and female, young and very old; although some members of my audience did not seem to understand this memo. The most surprising thing about Ti West’s X, a truly “fucked-away horror movie” that exists in 1972 rather than 2022, is that this tale about a senior couple who brutally massacre would-be porn stars in the 1970s has a strong emotional core. As I sat in my local movie theater waiting for the trailer teaser, someone behind me described the movie to a reasonably perfection to a friend she was talking to. “It was about an old woman who just wants to fuck… and then she kills everyone.”
She’s not wrong. That’s pretty much the plot of X in a nutshell. But Ti West’s vision for this zany tale of “hexploitation” is surprisingly tender, with the villains experiencing more character development than the majority of young people who eventually become their victims. And it’s clear with West setting out to direct a prequel film that focuses solely on Pearl’s early days, that he has a lot of love in his heart for his latest villains.
The slasher maniacs in X aren’t masked nightmares or dream demons, but a seemingly harmless old couple named Pearl and Howard. Pearl is played Mia Goth under heavy age make-up, while Howard is played by him Stefan Ure with plenty of makeup of her own, and West in particular lends enough of a soft side to Pearl that you’re probably finding yourself keen on seeing Goth delve further into the character right now. Like Jason Voorhees and Frankenstein’s monsters before her, Pearl is an empathetic newcomer to the pantheon of horror villains, though she quickly reveals herself to be a terrifying monster. And that’s because West at least makes sure we understand where she’s coming from.
X is a film that doesn’t seem to be about anything “about” in the end – it’s primarily the “fucking horror picture” that West expresses metaconsciousness about in the film’s final line – but beneath that gory surface, it’s actually about that quite different things. In West’s own words, it’s something of a love letter to the spirit of indie filmmaking, and there’s also enough to justify the post-film conversations about sex positivity and the way society tends to be on looking down on the porn industry for what it looks down on the horror film industry – porn is the ultimate celebration of the human body, horror its ultimate destruction. But X is also about something else. It’s a film about youth.
have it. lose it And in Pearl’s case, desperate… murderous… wanting her back.
X tells two stories that ultimately converge in bloody chaos, the first of which is the tale of a group of young friends who head to a remote location to film their own porn in the wake of Debbie Does Dallas. This is juxtaposed quite brilliantly with the story of Pearl and Howard, the much older couple who own the land the other set of characters are shooting their film on. It’s clear that Howard will probably rent the house to single men who don’t have the best of goals, but for this particular story, it’s that juxtaposition of youth and old age that drives the film forward. One of the stars of the porn being filmed next door is Maxine, also played by Mia Goth, and it’s Maxine’s very existence that ultimately becomes Pearl’s undoing. While Goth’s Maxine is youth and beauty personified, a young, desirable woman on the verge of fame, Goth’s Pearl is like a funhouse mirrored version of Maxine who’s aged several decades and lives a life of lonely, sad solitude who hasn’t could be further from Maxine’s Hollywood dreams.
To put it simply, Pearl is who Maxine could very well become.
Even before twenty-year-old Maxine shows up at the property, Pearl is haunted by everything she has and who she is. The only traces of her past life are the photos that hang on her wall like ghosts trapped in picture frames. We assume Pearl and Howard were once deeply in love with each other and had a whole world of passion, adventure and LIFE ahead of them. Pearl could have been anything and she could have had anything she wanted. Now, however, Pearl is a prisoner in her own failing, decomposing body. Her husband can’t even sleep with her anymore, his heart is too weak to handle the stress. They are a couple drifted apart by the very sad nature of the aging process, the love between them fading to nothing by forces beyond their control. When Pearl meets Maxine, something that has been dormant inside her is reawakened. And if you haven’t sympathized with Pearl before, well, West lets Fleetwood Mac do some of the heavy lifting.
Shortly after Pearl puts on makeup to look more like Maxine and her husband rejects her advances to make love, the other characters in X gather at their makeshift film studio on the property, when Kid Cudi‘s Jackson breaks out a guitar and Brittany snow‘s Bobby-Lynne starts belting out Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”. The impromptu concert is edited with footage of Pearl wiping off her “Maxine makeup” in the mirror, alone and dejected in her bedroom. The song selection couldn’t be more perfect for the moment.
Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child in my heart rise up?
Can I sail through the changing tides of the oceans?
Can I deal with the seasons of my life?
Well I was afraid to change
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes braver
Children get older too
And I’m getting older too
It’s one of the most tender moments you’ll ever find in a slasher film, leaving you heartbreaking even though you’re well aware that Pearl will gut this group of hopeful youngsters you’ve grown fond of. And it’s a moment that pays off later in the film, when Howard finally agrees to sleep with his wife one last time, heart weakened. The characters have already established themselves as creepy, murderous villains by this point, to be clear, but it’s another tender moment in which West makes sure he’s doing his due bit. You won’t find too many films that allow their senior characters to make love on screen, horror or otherwise, and it’s a testament to the bold uniqueness of West’s vision that he allows us the intimate act with the shows the same level of detail that we’ve seen previous sex scenes play out. If they weren’t murderous lunatics, it would be a downright beautiful scene; two longtime lovers who are finally connecting in a way they haven’t in many, many years. Some might find it funny, others might find it gross, but there’s still a bizarre tenderness to it.
I’m currently reading Jamie Nash’s book Save the Cat! Writing for television, he writes on page 49, “All good films are about characters, truth and emotion.” This statement is an indisputable fact, and Ti West’s X is a good film indeed because it is so much about characters , truth and emotions cares. We all want to be loved. And we can all relate to getting older. These are universal truths and universal emotions, and X deftly touches on them within the confines of which, if you don’t want to delve too deeply into something else, is a great deal, a twisted horror film about twisted people. But it’s because there’s that seed of humanity in the film that X is smarter and more compelling than the average slasher. And that’s why, I suspect, fans of X will be very keen to support Pearl when the time comes.
Good heroes have flaws and good villains have qualities we can identify with. In Pearl, Ti West and Mia Goth have brought a complex and terrifyingly relatable new villain to the big screen. Pearl is the sad horror of aging embodied in the most extreme horror film sense. Not only are we scared of Pearl sneaking up behind us and sticking a pitchfork through our eyeballs.
We fear what awaits us down the road on a much deeper level.
