#Hooptober9

💀 NUMBER FIVE 💀
💀 ONE FILM BY TI WEST 💀

"X" (2022)
* dir: Ti West
* Horror / Slasher / Mia Goth In Blue Eyeshadow And Denim Overalls And Nothing Else
[ ★★★★½ / ★★★★★ ]

Few things have made me happier as of late than the grand return of Ti West to feature filmmaking.

I've been an enormous fan of his ever since I randomly stumbled upon a DVD copy of "The Roost" way back in 2006, blind bought it based on the artwork alone, and fell instantly head-over-heels in love. It became one of those movies, along with Rian Johnson's "Brick" and John Cameron Mitchell's "Hedwig And The Angry Inch", that went into permanent rotation in my home, movies that every new person who entered into my life inevitably had to deal with me sitting them down to be like "now look at THIS interesting and unique film from this new, exciting filmmaker".

And while he would eventually score what you could essentially call an out-and-out critical slam dunk with "The House Of The Devil", I could never have guessed that he would land a commercial AND critical success with a refreshingly sex-positive riff on late-70s exploitation slashers (arguably one of the LEAST sex-positive subgenres to ever exist).

One of the things that makes "X" work so well for me is the way that West not only retains his many particular hallmarks as a filmmaker...interesting left-field editing choices, evocative use of jarring zooms and disorienting jump-cuts, deliberate pacing, and lots of horrible stuff happening to the face...while also deepening and broadening these stylistic flourishes until they feel less like attention grabbing gimmicks than they do natural extensions of the thematic elements actually happening on screen. And by the time we reach the climax of the film (pun intended?), everything is just barrelling along at such a compellingly breathless speed that you find yourself almost clinging to these aforementioned flourishes as a sort of buoy in the ever-expanding sea of blood and madness.

Superb. I couldn't be more excited to see "Pearl" than if it owed me money.