There weren’t a lot of people at the matinee showing of X I attended this past weekend, unfortunately, as the movie deserves to score big box office. And of the few there were, none of them, excepting me and my date, stuck around once the credits started rolling. Too bad for them, as they missed the after-credits treat: a trailer for PEARL, the prequel to X that is apparently already finished. Also there are plans for a third film to make up a trilogy!
As Ti West told Bloody Disgusting: “In the way that X is affected, let’s say by 1970s horror independent filmmaking and Americana cinema, Pearl [the prequel, PEARL] is influenced by a very different era of filmmaking. If we do the third one, it will be affected by a different type of cinema.” Here’s hoping they do!
West also waxes poetic about the commonality between Horror and porn: “…[H]orror and porn, especially in the seventies, have this symbiotic relationship of being the outsider independent genres. It made sense that if I could show people what it’s like to make an adult movie and how making it is nothing like watching it is like, it would hopefully endear you to the craft and process of filmmaking. Which would hopefully also open your appreciation to the movie I was making at the same time.”
The meta in X is buried so deeply that some Normie critics missed it entirely. That’s not surprising. But I’m betting the Horror marks get it.