In the Flesh: X

Depictions of the elderly body in horror most often hew toward the decrepit and the horrific, walking memento mori like the nude and aging cultists of Hereditary, the monstrous maternal figures of House of the Devil and Amulet, or The Shining’s ghastly, rotting specter in room 237, who first appears as a beautiful seductress. This last example hews closest to what Ti West is doing with the elderly antagonists of X, decrepit Howard (Stephen Ure) and his sex-starved and deeply embittered wife, Pearl (Mia Goth, who also plays porn starlet Maxine Minx). Kept from intimacy by Howard’s heart condition, the couple serially kidnap their own boarders for Pearl to rape before killing them and dumping their cars and bodies in the nearby alligator-infested swamp. West’s story, though, is digging deeper in its particular vein than Kubrick’s bait and switch apparition. With Pearl he conjures a villain part Annie Wilkes, part Norma Bates, and part Giallo rapist, a sexual omnivore left so devastated by her own decrepitude and her husband’s inability to fullfil her needs that she hunts among the very same “whores” both she and the preacher whose censorious fire and brimstone sermons are constantly blaring from her television deride and abhor.

And yet West locates real tenderness and human need beneath the vicious surface of Pearl’s appetites, taking time to show her insecurity and the vulnerability — and desire for vulnerability — which fuels it. “You don’t deserve to have it,” she says to blond bombshell Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow). “You don’t deserve to flaunt it at me, whore.” Both she and her husband seem to derive a self-righteous thrill from accusing others of the sexually predatory and wanton behavior they themselves actually exhibit. Before murdering him, Howard needles Black porn star Jackson (Scott Mescudi) about “enticing” his wife, clearly trying to involve himself in Pearl’s sexual games by proxy in some kind of racist cuckolding fantasy. The aged pair’s longing for possession of and access to the bodies and sexualities of young people as proxies for their own faded youths resonate powerfully in the present gerontocratic political environment. America’s elderly and undersexed regularly go to great lengths to exert control over the bodies and sexualities of younger people. Its intersection with societal neglect of and revulsion towards the elder body is a thorny and difficult area to parse, but West does so with care.

Shot with refreshing clarity and flair and bolstered by truly impressive practical gore effects, X brings the sexual anxieties of the American slasher into new territory. Pornography as art, sexual prudishness and hypocrisy, and fear and denial of mortality come together into an affecting film with substantial visual charm. West’s frequent overhead shots create a sense of almost deific distance from scenes of despair and peril, while his closeups quickly and efficiently characterize his deeply likable supporting cast. It can’t quite reach the towering, madness-inducing bleakness of its most obvious antecedent — The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — but its ending has a nasty bite nonetheless. Finally, some good fucking food.