Critic Reviews

There are some tremendous misdirects, effective jump scares, and literal piles of gore. There just happens to be plenty of brains to go with all that blood.

X is a clever and exuberant throwback to a less innocent time, when movies could be naughty, disreputable and idiosyncratic.

Come to West’s celebration of the movies’ darker underbelly for the adrenaline rush of sex and violence. Exit it having witnessed something that marks the spot where baser impulses meets artistry, in more ways than one.

Ti West's latest slasher 'X' defies all odds and sets itself apart from the crowd as a phenomenal piece of filmmaking that reinvents the overplayed clichés and marks a refreshing turning point for modern horror.

X has no interest in making sweeping statements about sexual liberation, about pornography or ageing. It brings the slasher back to its fleshy basics, leaning into what made the granddaddies of slasher films so memorable.

It is a dynamic, deadly work of filmmaking that achieves all its lofty ambitions and then some to become an absolute masterwork.

On the whole, X proves that West is a master of craft. In The House of the Devil, he ingeniously drew out suspense through his slow, careful editing, and 13 years later he still hasn’t lost his touch.

Ti West’s X is a strange and wonderful return to form for the indie-horror phenom, an ode to the life-altering magic of cheap and dirty horror pictures. 13 years after his breakout hit in the genre, Ti West has added another great horror film to the canon.

For its whole running time, X has ideas on its mind. Like the doubled-edged title itself, both an evocation of the grungy rating this movie might have received in 1979 and something more suggestive ("You've got that X factor," Wayne says of Maxine's allure), it indicates a film that feels unpinned, ominous, and potentially unforgettable.

The cast is strong, the comedy and the horror work perfectly in tandem, the meta-commentary is the best Scream, and the ending line is sheer perfection.