Ti West’s X aims its slasher-movie homage straight at classic horror fanatics

polygon.com:

Polygon team is reporting in from the 2022 media expo SXSW, with a look at the next wave of upcoming independent releases in sci-fi, horror, and documentary film.

The House of the Devil director Ti West never left horror. It’s been nearly a decade since his last horror movie, The Sacrament, but he’s stayed busy in horror TV, directing episodes of Scream: The TV Series, The Exorcist, Them, and more. He returns to his big-screen roots with X, a deliciously gory, delightfully funny homage to 1970s indie filmmaking that lures viewers into a false sense of security with a fun hangout movie, then unleashes all hell on the screen. By the time the credits roll, it makes sense that A24 would confirm this as the distribution house’s first horror franchise.

In 1979, strip-club owner Wayne (Martin Henderson) decides to gather a group of friends, employees, and a couple of idealistic filmmaking-enthusiast tagalongs to shoot a porn film that will make them all famous. There’s Wayne’s girlfriend Maxine (Mia Goth), Bobby-Lane (Brittany Snow), and Jackson (Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi), who will star in the film. Of course, this won’t be just any old porn film. As writer, director, editor, and cinematographer R.J. (Owen Campbell) explains, he’s here to prove that it’s “possible to make a good dirty movie.” He’s ready to employ avant-garde techniques and everything, and he’s brought along his girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) as boom-mic operator. Of course, given that this is a ragtag production, corners are cut — most notably, the cast and crew are staying at a remote farmhouse owned by an elderly couple who are supposedly unaware of what they’re planning to do. Soon enough, bodies start dropping.

Though the premise of a porn shoot turning