My Favorite F***ing Movie: Sex Won’t Kill You, But Something Else Surely Will (Ti West’s X)

I was planning on releasing this month’s essay at the beginning of the month, as I normally do, but then I got it in my head that I wanted my Halloween costume to coincide with the essay… which spiraled into a whole project, so now I won’t be releasing that essay until the end of the month! As an apology, I’m reposting this essay that I wrote for Daily Grindhouse when X first came out in 2022 (with a few new edits; I am incapable of leaving an old piece of writing alone). I think this is such a special movie and I really love what I wrote about it, so I’m happy to be giving it a second life as part of this series. I’ll be releasing my intended essay at the end of the month, so you’re getting a twofer for October, you lucky dogs.

Being human is a real horror show.

We’re all a bloody mess of feelings and needs, inhabiting skin sacks full of organs with their own ideas—competing, and often conflicting, with one another. Head and heart. Gut and groin. Or, to state it even more plainly:

“You can decide who you wanna love, but not who you wanna screw. Attraction’s out of our control; it ain’t healthy keeping those feelings locked away inside.”

So says Maxine, the heroine of Ti West’s X, a 1970s grindhouse-style slasher that captures the decade both visually and thematically. Containing numerous nods to horror movies of the time (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in particular), and tapping into a rebellious spirit worthy of taking place in 1979 – smack during the Golden Age of Porn. On the cusp of what film producer Wayne predicts will be the “explosion” of the home video market and hoping to strike it rich, Wayne and his cohort of performers rent a guest house on a farm in Texas with a plan to shoot a porno on a bare-bones budget over the next few days. Wayne does not, however, inform the property owner, Howard, of what they intend to do on his property: “Better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Read the rest of the essay here, and if you enjoy it, please consider subscribing!