Sex, gore and double roles: How A24 slasher ‘X’ mines the horrors of growing old
Mia Goth really wasn’t interested in making another horror film. Then she read the surprising and provocative script for “X,” writer-director Ti West’s blood-soaked return to the genre after nearly a decade, about an amateur porn crew whose film shoot on a rural Texas farm sends their geriatric hosts into a murderous tizzy.
Channeling exploitation cinema influences through a decidedly modern lens, the rollicking ’70s-style slasher, in theaters now, oozes smart and salacious thrills under the banner of art-house distributor A24. As the credits roll on the company’s first horror franchise, many moviegoers will be surprised to discover the film’s wildest gambit, which is also the reason Goth came aboard West’s R-rated sex- and gore-fueled romp.
In “X,” Goth (“Suspiria,” “High Life”) is transfixing as Maxine, a cocaine-fueled stripper eyeing adult film stardom as her ticket to the life she craves. And in a second role, transformed by makeup and prosthetics by Weta Workshop, she also plays Pearl, one of the farm’s elderly owners and the film’s surprising villain, driven to violence by her lusty envy of the nubile youngsters getting busy in her boardinghouse.
The physical and
