“X” ( R) ** and a half

PRE-release material issued presumably by the producers of this little piece of Gothic-to-the-max cinema announced that it was a horror movie. 

After watching most of its characters come to violent death, flavoured with a sprinkle of X-rated images, I came away neither disgusted, disappointed nor dismayed by it. Horrible? Yes. Horrid? Folk of delicate sensitivity who take it seriously might consider it so. 

But underlying the blood, guts, nudity and vocabulary, writer/director Ti West seems to be trying to make a point about what our arbiters of public morality decided were barriers beyond which young eyes and minds should not venture.

West’s film’s a mixed bag of sex and violence for unfettered grown-up consumption. A group of young adults is going to make a movie on a run-down Texas farm belonging to Howard (Stephen Ure) and his wife Pearl (Mia Goth). They’re both very old. Howard still adores the woman whom he met and married all those years ago. But his years have outpaced his ability to perform. Which is a disappointment for Pearl, whose erotic cravings still flow.

The young filmmakers are led by a producer/writer/director, with a cameraman and a young actor whose job, once the camera starts rolling, will be to tup four young women. These are a comely enough bunch who seem unfazed by what they’ve signed up to do. Except the youngest, whose purpose initially seems ill-defined but who tells the director that she wants to be in the movie. ‘Nuf sed.

The first day of the shoot is how you might expect – cast and crew settling into what’s going on. The images at times get a little complicated but the idea is leading to the film’s real purpose, which is to tell what went on after the lights went out. 

By sunrise the next day, the only one of the youngsters still alive is Maxine (Mia Goth again). And Howard and Pearl have tupped for the last time. He dies in the act; she dies staggering along the track when a car drives over her head.

The story’s supposed to take place in Texas, US. It was shot mostly in NZ. 

A horror movie? A message movie? It nearly makes the grade on both counts. 

At Dendy