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In X, horror director Ti West’s first movie since his 2016 Western In a Valley of Violence, unimaginable terror quickly overtakes the pleasures inherent in the adult-film shoot that drives its story. Set in 1979 Texas, it follows an aspiring producer, Wayne (Martin Henderson), who wants to capitalize on the blossoming home-video market and has designs to make his first blue movie. To both ensure authentic-enough mise-en-scènes and whittle down production costs on the project — tentatively called “The Farmer’s Daughters” and premised more or less exactly how you’d expect — he’s booked a weekend stay at a middle-of-nowhere farmhouse owned by elderly couple Howard and Pearl (Stephen Ure and Mia Goth). Their cartoonishly slouchy old-age makeup suggests they are as ancient as the hanging gardens of Babylon.

Wayne’s performers are his coke-sniffing “future fiancée” Maxine (also Goth), a girl-next-door type yearning for Lynda Carter-level stardom; Jayne Mansfield-esque Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow), an old pro contented in her profession; and well-endowed Vietnam vet Jackson (Kid Cudi), who’s also sometimes Bobby-Lynne’s boyfriend. The crew consists only of a stringy-haired director, RJ (Martin Campbell), whose European-cinema fetish convinces him he could make something up to Jean-Luc Godard’s standards, and his God-fearing girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega, who’s in every movie this year), who dutifully if irritatedly points the mic when he shoots. Early scenes have a lots-of-fun “let’s make a picture” spiritedness; you get taken by this group’s chipper can-do attitude. And the goofy movie-within-the-movie moments almost always netted big laughs at the showing I attended. 

Read the full review on 425.