Film Review : "X"

 Spoiler alert "House of the Devil" is still my favorite TI West movie. His first horror movie in 9 years  works off the formula from the splatter films of the late 70s. The acting an character development is on par with your average Friday the 13th sequel, so unlikeable enough to hope they get killed. In this regard the movie gets it better than the last Texas Chainsaw Massacre that  Netflix released. The premise is a director leads a group of twenty somethings into bumfuck Texas to make Porn. From there all sorts of messages creep in regarding sex, but the real monster her is old age. The threat of youth and the repulsion the elderly carry.

The ambiguous nature of this movie until the shit hits the fan leaves much to the imagination until  everything unfolds. At first you think maybe the old lady is a witch. What she is in truth is the best actor of this movie. Kid Kudi's survival rate is about what you would expect from a black person in a horror movie, though he does not die first. For a van of people who came to have sex in the woods they destined to die by breaking the rules of horror movies. It is however the person who is most against sex when pressed to be open minded that dies first which is a spin on the normal morals. The gore effects are purposefully bad to looks like something from the 70s. 

Despite the gruesome deaths that unfold, including death by alligator, the most gruesome moment is the girl who has to climb out from under a bed old people are having sex in. This pushes the ageism theme home. The actors are made up to look more hideous that the normal panges of old age would bring upon them. Hopefully not the best horror movie we are going to see all year, it is not bad, and uses more restraint than not most of the time. Chelsea Wolfe does the music but aside the song at the end you can not really tell. If you have a thing for 70s splatter this is done better than most attempts to reboot it. 

The Innkeepers

Ti West's newest film the InnKeepers, had high expectations after i loved the creepy factor of his previous effort " house of the devil" . I was not prepared for the stylistic shift , but can appreciate a film maker who wants to have a boarder range and not just be a one trick pony. At times i think The Innkeepers , is no more horror than say Shaun of the dead, but it's not a comedy either , falling into more of a Napoleon Dynamite slacker ethos , sure there is a haunted hotel , there is a serial Killer in last year's day dream nation but that didn't make that film horror either , not that it tried to be.
The characters are real , fleshed out and well acted , so that keeps the movie moving a few scenes tease you as you can see something happening from a mile away . I liked this movie in the same way i liked Ghost World or high fidelity, so despite the spooky poster art i wouldn't classify this as a horror movie per se , dark comedic drama ? Sure he pulls out a scare of sorts i suppose at the end but where house of the devil worked is that the tension was kept taunt through out the whole movie, here it feels more like yeah , here's this boo.
Here the haunted house didn't really carry the sense of menace, it needs to loom as the monster or be convincing , 1408 in it's first hour before it turned into a scary Jumanji didn't give you the imposing structure like Amityville, or the isolation factor like the shining , even movies like paranormal activity and poltergeist which occur in the burbs created enough myth to keep you on edge , after all isn't that the purpose of a ghost story. Normally i am the most scared by a good haunting , even a haunting in Connecticut, here the atmosphere of menace , just wasn't there perhaps purposefully so to add to the slacker realism.
Hope Ti goes back to horror on his next , films , if you want to watch something with a slight spook to it perhaps with a friend who isn't into horror , this would work, it's well acted and made , and not a bad movie , perhaps mis marketed