X

The film crew goes to a secluded farm to shoot a memorable, or at least lucrative, XXX movie. Thanks to a couple of degenerate old men, the orgy quickly turns into a spectacle of violence. A horror film that recalls the classics of porn and gore cinema.

X blends old and new, rather than just proffering empty references. The film evokes the grind-house energy of the original Texas Chainsaw while also pulling off complicated cinematic tricks that wouldn’t have been possible 50 years ago. West is a director with a deep understanding of period aesthetics—his breakthrough 2009 work, The House of the Devil, was a precise homage to the VHS video nasties of the ’80s; it looked like a once-banned movie that had just been unearthed. X could be another tribute, and even hints at the nasties genre with a teasing prologue in which a local sheriff comes upon a crime scene littered with mysterious film canisters.

The Slasher Film X Is a Modern Classic (theatlantic.com)