Feedback Friday: 'X' Marks the Spot (Patreon)

Our recent pairing of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and X brought this reaction from a listener who had to reconcile his own feelings about Ti West’s retro-horror film with the reaction of a rowdy group of college students on opening night. He also has some questions about the pacing of the kills. Kyle writes:

I had some pretty strong reactions to X, the reactions of my fellow audience members when I saw it, and to your conversation about it. Full disclosure (as will become apparent quickly): I loved X.

In response to Tasha’s comments about schoolyard giggling, I think that’s unfair to the movie and judges it by the worst instincts in an audience. I saw it at a theater near a college, which was thus full of students on opening night, and was genuinely very angry at multiple points throughout the movie because of widespread uncomfortable giggling. But I don’t think we can blame the movie for that. I think the split screen sequence (which I am very surprised wasn’t discussed after Tasha referenced the song) invites us to care about Pearl and her very real sadness about no longer being desirable to her husband. So I, along with Scott, found the sex scene to be surprisingly emotionally potent, with an added dash of tension with Maxine under the bed, but none of that played like comedy to me. Which is not to say the movie is humorless—Cudi’s swinging dick silhouette, plus the the abrupt deaths at the end, I think are entirely purposefully funny. The characterization of Pearl and her husband’s sex scene as “comically ew gross” is unfair and incorrect. In fact, I think the movie is inviting us to face that discomfort about old people’s bodies and the instinct to laugh, and question it, because these are real people with real feelings, yes even if they are also murderous, but horror has a long history of sympathetic/tragic villains

I am also curious, given the conversation about “kills” and how West takes time with the set pieces, what you all think of the increased pace of the kills as the film goes on. The first two are really drawn out, but by the end 3 people die within what feels like seconds of each other. I don’t know that it means anything, but I found it interesting.

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Scott responds:

Audience response during horror movies can get a little tricky, because of the “uncomfortable” part of the “widespread uncomfortable giggling.” Laughter tends to act as an instinctual response to fear sometimes, as if it’s a kind of repellent to ease the discomfort of being scared. When a horror film elicits a genuine, intended laugh—and X supplies plenty of those—you can almost feel the relief of people who are grateful to have that relief. Unfortunately, it does spill over at times into laughs where they don’t seem appropriate, like a scene where murderous old people get their freak on. I’m glad you’re in my corner on the odd, tragic poignancy of Pearl’s character, whose interest in Maxine is tied to her lost youth and diminished appeal as a sexual being—which, of course, manifests itself in some very unhealthy and macabre examples of acting out! But if you can see this human dimension in the character, and see the sex scene as an impulsive and inelegant moment when this floundering marriage reignites, I can understand being annoyed by the giggles. I love watching movies in a theater with an audience, by and large, but you don’t always get the experience you want.

As for the pacing of the kills, I of course appreciated West’s slow-burn style, which gives us plenty of murder-free time to establish the tension between the farmstead owners and their guests shooting a porn film on the sly. But once it’s clear to all the living characters that they’re in mortal danger, the jig is up in the pacing department, so staging one quick kill after another seems perfectly normal to me. I was just grateful for each one having its own flavor. Look out for alligators!