An excerpt from my script review for X (2022) which will be available 08/18/26:
After the “excitement” of Reals’ X film review, I had to check the script out for myself…
2.) Plot Stability
This was a quick and fun little slasher.
It starts off a bit slow, giving us these (trying too hard) sexy adult entertainers heading out of the big city to the rural Texas countryside.
Their plan is to take advantage of the early stages of the home video adult film industry.
“Rub one out in the privacy of your own home!”
One of the main characters, Wayne, seems to have a lot of get rich quick schemes, of which this is the latest one.
It’s not an entirely bad idea, but where they start to get into trouble is the farm boarding house they rented is owned by an elderly, old school war vet who doesn’t like the look of them.
Naturally he won’t be too keen on the movie they’re trying to shoot.
And here’s where things start to get away from the “horror”…
The man’s elderly wife, Pearl, “used to be” a beauty (something she seems to mention anytime she encounters one of the girls) and there’s this weird parallel that never seems to go anywhere between Pearl and the youngest actress Maxine.
Almost like you expect there to be some sort of voodoo tie-in where Pearl saps Maxine’s youth and beauty for herself…
…but nothing like that happens…this parallel only exists because…Art.
The other thing that’s too on the nose, is the voiceover of all the televangelist stuff.
We get it…that’ll be Maxine’s dad…something that’s less twist and more telegraph…but it beats us over the head time and again…because…morality.
It was at this point in my reading that I began to wonder if I knew which studio produced the film…and of course it was A24!
I’m now curious to go back and see what the Cap’n thought of this one after our disagreement on Backrooms, because had that newer project been a completely unique project (not piggybacking off an established internet creepypasta) I’d argue it’d have received similar box office results like X.
And this one wasn’t really bad…overall I liked it. The problem is it just tried too hard to be something it’s not.
The slasher kills all felt rather unique and bloody, something fans of the genre crave.
My other single complaint on this is it reads a bit too short at only 86 pages.
There could have been one more kill to achieve a better length, and a perfect place for it would have been Howard finishing off the near dead hippy he had chained up in the basement.
Doing it where Lorraine can see scores bonus points!
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