X (Ti West, 2022)

 

This is, by far, one of the best slasher movies that I have seen in my life. And to take it a bit further, X is one of the best contemporary horror films. It's not only that is greatly shot and manufactured, but it is mostly a movie that is trying and succeeds to pass some very interesting and thought-provoking comments about life, sex, porn movies, religion and fanaticism. I have said it many times that many horror movies tend to be shallow and without a theme other than gore and scares, well X is the big surprise, the big exception. A wonderful screenplay, an absolutely astonishing editing that gives to the film a very modern flavour although it takes place in 1979 and a movie that is not afraid to talk about an ugly America, an America that trembles between a deep and rotten conservatism and a heinous fanaticism. The fact that the movie doesn't try to ridicule the people who are shooting the porn movie, shows that there is a tendency in the film to provoke questions and debates. I have said it many times that porn movies, are movies. There is good porn, mediocre porn and shit porn, exactly in the same way as it goes with other genres. The fact that no famous director shoots porn is because we are degenerated prudes and we tend to fool ourselves that sex on the screen is a bad, unethical thing to picture. It's quite normal to picture a decapitated body, but it's unethical to picture a cock that has an orgasm. We are fucking liars and nothing less. 

X is a movie that understands that good and evil don't work the way that they teach us in this society. It's a movie that has a clear comment that evil comes from suppression. It comes from there where evil has been pictured as the freedom to do as you like. The freedom to be even a porn star if that suits you. The freedom to shoot a hardcore sex scene, regardless the fact that you are no professional porn star. The freedom to be an open person, a person free of complexes, a person who chooses his life the way that it makes him happy. And for all those reasons X is a movie that could be said as the horror movies of tomorrow. Provocative, naughty, free and liberal.