It's not super often that you'll see a horror movie earn near-unanimous praise from critics, but writer/director Ti West's X has earned that response ever since its midnight premiere last week at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. A throwback genre entry that is set in the 1970s and sees a slasher story play out a porn shoot, the film has wowed professional cinephiles and earned high grades across the board. One significant voice that has joined that symphony is fiction legend Stephen King, who has seen the racy flick and responded to it with a series of positive adjectives.
King makes regular use of his Twitter page to share love for films and television shows that he is watching – be it the insanity of James Wan's Malignant or the high tension of the Showtime series Yellowjackets – and X is the latest title to earn his meaningful stamp of approval. Without providing any specifics, he provided overall impressions of the movie, calling it "scary," "smart," and "entertaining" while having an awareness of itself. You can see Stephen King's Tweet below:
X is an extremely good horror movie. Scary, smart, knowing. Oh. And entertaining.March 23, 2022
In the past, Stephen King has levied criticism against the slasher subgenre and series like Friday The 13th due to their tendency to prioritize bloodletting over character development – but he clearly doesn't see X that way.
Having primarily been working on small screen projects recently, Ti West made X as his first feature in six years, his last being the 2016 western In A Valley Of Violence, starring Ethan Hawke and John Travolta. The film takes place in 1979 and follows a group of ambitious pornographers and performers who set out to create the best movie their industry has ever seen. They set up production on a ranch in rural Texas belonging to an elderly couple – but fail to divulge the actual nature of their work.
Things don't go so well when what they are really doing is discovered, and as our own Mike Reyes puts it in his review, "The joy of X comes from the unexpected, which fits so wonderfully into the stuff you’d definitely expect from the sexy tin this film is packaged in."
Given his appreciation for X, Stephen King will surely be excited to know that there is more in the works from the world of the film, as Ti West has revealed that he has already finished production on Pearl – a prequel that centers on the eponymous character played by Mia Goth. Unfortunately, A24 (which just keeps delivering more and more genre gems) has not yet announced plans for the project's release.
X, which stars Mia Goth, Brittany Snow, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, and Scott Mescudi, is now playing exclusively in theaters. To discover everything set to arrive on the big screen and on streaming in what remains of the year, check our our 2022 Movie Release Calendar.
