Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Simran Hans

X review – Bump’n’grindhouse from horror director Ti West

X film still
X: ripe with winks and nudges. Photograph: Christopher Moss

The year is 1979 and a foxy gang of actors from Houston, Texas, are pounding down the highway in a truck plastered with the name “Plowing Service”. The latest film from horror director Ti West (The House of the Devil), about a porn movie shoot gone wrong, is ripe with playful winks and nudges.

Producer Wayne (Martin Henderson) casts his younger girlfriend, the coke-snorting Maxine (Mia Goth), in “The Farmer’s Daughter” alongside Bobby-Lynne (a witty Brittany Snow) and former marine Jackson (Scott Mescudi, AKA Kid Cudi). Director RJ (Owen Campbell) aspires to make “a good dirty movie”, but to his sound recordist girlfriend, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), “it’s smut”. Their activities titillate the older couple next door. West has great fun teasing the audience ahead of the gory climax. Even more provocative is the real “money shot”, which sees the elderly lovers getting their kicks.

  • X is released in US and UK cinemas on 18 March

Watch a trailer for X.
Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.