Is it possible to elevate a Texas Chainsaw-type slasher about a porn shoot while still delivering on what that premise suggests? Director Ti West is determined to find out.
Modern takes on ‘70s grindhouse cinema are a bit of a mixed bag. One one hand, you have filmmakers whose main takeaway from that era is how violent and ugly the films could be, and so their approach to updating the style is simply to amp up the brutality and spitefulness to the nth degree. That makes movies like The Green Inferno or the remake of The Hills Have Eyes nigh unwatchable to me. On the other hand, you have something like Mandy or Grindhouse (natch) which focus on the unpredictability and surrealism of those earlier films, while preserving enough of the nihilism to make them recognizable as grindhouse homage. I like those movies quite a bit, but that word homage is very apt. They don’t really have anything new to say, they simply exist as a blood-stained love letter to genre filmmaking. When I saw that Ti West had made a slasher set in the 70’s that focuses on a surreptitious adult film shoot on a backwoods farm, I expected something along that spectrum. Given West’s reputation as a thoughtful indie horror auteur, I was hoping for a movie that was not only watchable, but enjoyable as well. West certainly delivered an enjoyable experience, replete with some of the winking nods to the viewer that you might expect, but he also managed to create something with ambitions beyond just a genre tribute with X.
First of all, let me say that this is a fun movie. The worst thing West could have done with a premise like “grindhouse porno slasher” is to turn it into some sort of ambiguous, cerebral slow burn. He does not shy away from catering to his viewer’s baser instincts, and while he does indulge in some playful meta commentary on the prurient nature of the movie, it’s important that he is not scolding us for having those instincts either. Sex and violence is baked into the DNA of this movie, and, West suggests, that’s totally ok. He walks quite the tightrope, in fact, of indulging in the hard R nature of the project without veering into territory that feels exploitative. Sure, all the beautiful young people in the movie show some skin and engage in sexual activity, but it is important for West to explicitly give them all agency in those decisions. There is a fascinating scene where the director’s girlfriend (the director character, not Ti West), along on the trip to help out with cameras and boom mics and such, transitions from a quietly disapproving scowl into a eager participant. She is emboldened by the perceived freedom and lack of self-consciousness of the actors, and wants to claim the same thing for herself (much to her boyfriend’s chagrin). Casting plays a strong role in this section as well, as Jenna Ortega plays the character in question, and she is an actor primarily known for rising up through the Disney sitcom and TV movie factory. It’s hard not to read the scene as a commentary on the Miley Cyrus/Brittany Spears/Vanessa Hudgins phenomenon where child actors are immediately “sexified” as they age into early adulthood, sometimes in an attempt to distance themselves from their public persona as children, sometimes because society demands it, often both. For Ortega’s character, and the rest, the motivation is simply that they are young and attractive and savvy enough to know that those conditions are both marketable and ephemeral. That idea that society is obsessed with sex and youth, and particularly both together, is mirrored in the film’s antagonists and gives the story it’s oddly touching impact.
The counterpoint to our nubile, free-spirited entrepreneurs is the elderly couple that owns the farm that they are filming at. The script seems to be heading in a direction that pits them against the protagonists based on some sort of evangelical fury at discovering that a porno is being filmed under their noses, but the reality is much more interesting and nuanced. Instead of the actors and crew being condemned for their immorality, they are condemned for being a reminder of everything the farm’s owners are not, or at least not anymore. They aren’t young, they aren’t sexy, they can’t even make love without the looming specter of the husband’s bad heart making the act fraught. West goes to great lengths to make the inexorable march of time the true horror element of the film. The elderly characters are made up to be almost cartoonishly ghastly in appearance, and the biggest scares seem to come less from the sharp implements of murder that are stock and trade of this type of movie, and more from the appearance and especially the touch of those who have aged out of desirability. It is a surprising direction for the film to take, and one that ties it together thematically in a way that is much stronger than most horror fare, and certainly almost all horror fare with such a lascivious subject matter. West even presents a secondary theme that mirrors the porn shoot director’s ambition to make an artful dirty movie with West’s own attempt to make something meaningful out of a premise that, on its surface, would seem to offer nothing beyond gore and titillation. By my estimation he succeeds to a remarkable degree, making a thoughtful, well shot, well acted movie with something to say but still delivering on an authentic grindhouse experience as well. An early contender for my favorite movie of the marathon.
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