Last night was Halloween night, and my boyfriend and I decided to watch a horror movie because it seemed fitting. We were going to watch Pearl, but realized it was a trilogy, with X being first, then Pearl as a prequel, then Maxxine as a sequel.Â
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!
The movie was kind of a strange watch. I am not one to shy away from porn or gore, as I think it’s hard to avoid that with R-rated movies. But it was genuinely strange. The framing itself was weird, and I think that’s just due to the director’s preferences. But the concept of making homemade porn, in someone else’s barn, in the 70’s, is not only strange, but also pretty funny. I think Mia Goth played her character incredibly well, and I was surprised to see Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, AND Kid Cudi in the cast. I think Kid Cudi being there was definitely the most shocking, because I wasn’t even aware that he had an acting career, but he was an incredible actor!Â
The plotline wasn’t exactly “horror-inducing,” but I did have to shield my eyes from the gore because I just found it to be sort of gross. Even as someone who listens to and watches true crime stuff all the time, it was a little much for me, and the movie wasn’t shy of showing everything. I feel as though the approach of making the old people in the movie killers is one that works well, because I think “The Visit,” one of the first horror movies I saw, executed this trope perfectly. The elderly are already the perfect subjects for antagonists because their strange and odd behavior always gets attributed to their age. It is not often that “the sweet old lady next door” is pinned as a killer.Â
The slasher film idea is nothing new, but I think X did a good job of embracing the idea wholeheartedly. It went all in, and didn’t leave out any of the indecencies. It hits the trope on the nose, and has a nostalgic setting with modern filmmaking attributes. I think that the movie should have focused more on Mia Goth;s character in the wake of tragedy and turmoil, but it followed the classic killing off characters one-by-one stereotype that slasher films often do. Mia Goth’s character was asleep for a majority of the night the killings took place, and displayed little to no emotion in the thick of the brutality. I applaud her ability to not only play the young Maxxine, but also the old woman in the film. I didn’t even notice it was the same person until my boyfriend looked it up after.Â
Moving forward, I anticipate that Pearl will take place even before X does, as I think it follows the life of the old woman in the film from when she was young. Then, Maxxine, the final movie of the trilogy, will follow Maxxine’s life of reaching for stardom after the events on the farm in this movie. I believe that this movie lived up to the hype, and the turnaround for producing and releasing the three movies so closely together is incredible, especially considering that it wasn’t even originally supposed to go beyond X.Â