x movie review the guardian

‘X’ Review: ’70s Horror Meets ’70s Porn in the Rare ‘Chain Saw’ Homage That Earns Its Fear

In 1979, a group of renegades rent a Texas farmhouse to shoot a porn film — and for once the mayhem that follows doesn't feel cheap.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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If I had a dime — or maybe a drop of blood — for every movie that tried to recreate the vibe, the situation, and the high anxiety of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” I’d have a pretty big bucket of blood. For decades, I’ve been watching movies that open with a handful of obnoxious kids in a vehicle, tooling down a redneck roadway, and then…well, you know what happens next. They land in a remote house somewhere, at which point the film in question stops bearing any resemblance to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” Instead, it turns into one more instance of deadening formula trash: another piece of slasher-movie roadkill.

More than that, it’s a movie made with genuine mood and skill and flavor. Your average “Chain Saw” knockoff never seems remotely like a movie from the grainy outlaw ’70s. It is, rather, contempo product that feels like product; the movies in the “Chain Saw” franchise itself are made with the worst kind of synthetic digital sheen. But “X,” set in 1979, actually achieves the look and atmosphere of 1979: the free-ride waywardness, the needle drops (Pablo Cruise, “In the Summertime”), the local televangelist barking at his stuffy minions on a black-and-white TV set. The film’s images have a no-fuss pastoral documentary lyricism, and it’s not just the way the shots look. It’s the way they’re cut together — slowly and calmly, without razzmatazz, so that the film seems to be taking place in real time, at a time when technology was a lot quieter. The folks within those frames actually seem like real people.

Her boyfriend, the middle-aged cowboy stud Wayne (Martin Henderson), is producing the film and running the shoot. Maxine is going to be one of the farmer’s daughters, and so is Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow), who works, like Maxine, at a Houston burlesque club. Jackson (Scott Mescudi, a.k.a. Kid Cudi), the one male porn actor in the group, is Bobby-Lynne’s’s boyfriend, and the other two kids are the filmmakers: RJ (Owen Campbell), the stringy-haired geek who’s directing the film (i.e., pointing the camera), and has convinced himself it’s going to be a piece of “cinema,” and his girlfriend, Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), who’s on hand to hold the boom mike. They have rented a farm cottage about 75 yards from the main house, and they’re going to use that and the cow barn to stage their country-vixen fantasy.

“Texas Chain Saw,” the granddaddy of the slasher genre, had an atmosphere that was sexualized enough that the porn-film plot of “X” feels like a natural extension of it. We see several of the porn scenes being shot, and like the ones in “Boogie Nights” they’re realistic and true to the scruffy pre-video porn vibe. So what’s there to be scared of? When they arrive at the farmhouse, Wayne is greeted at the door by a gnarly old man who looks about 100, like the grandpa in “Chain Saw.” He doesn’t seem that scary until he picks up a shotgun. Even so, there’s got to be more.

Is there a Leatherface? Not quite. But grandpa has a wife, who looks about as old as he is, and she starts to show up in odd places, her white hair, in a Victorian bun like the one on the corpse of Norman Bates’ mother, looking like a nimbus. These two ancient codgers are the quintessence of creepy. But we wonder what’s going to happen, since Ti West, in making this film, strikes a kind of deal with the audience. He basically says: I won’t cheat. I won’t have an insane killer coming out of nowhere. I will earn your fear. And he does.

“X” is no “Chain Saw.” What is? Nothing comes close (except for maybe Takashi Miike’s “Audition,” the most disturbing horror film since). But “X” is a wily and entertaining slow-motion ride of terror that earns its shocks, along with its singular quease factor, which relates to the fact that the demons here are ancient specimens of humanity who actually have a touch of…humanity. West, as a filmmaker, reverses tropes in a way that speaks to the era that was coming. The men, for once, are the first to get killed off, and where movie slashers tend to represent the suppression of female sexuality, “X” is a kind of feminist horror film in which the principal demon is a woman who wants to embrace sexuality. The world just won’t let her.

Reviewed at Stateside at the Paramount (SXSW), March 13, 2022. MPAA rating: R. Running time: 105 MIN.

• Production: An 24 release of a BRON Creative, MAD SOLAR production. Producers: Jacob Jaffke, Kevin Turen, Harrison Kreiss, Ti West. Executive producers: Sam Levinson, Ashley Levinson, Peter Phok, Scott Mescudi, Dennis Cummings, Karina Manashil.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Ti West. Camera: Eliot Rockett. Editors: David Kashevaroff, Ti West. Music: Tyler Bates, Chelsea Wolfe.
• With: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell,. Stephen Ure, Scott Mescudi.

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Ti West’s X aims its slasher-movie homage straight at classic horror fanatics

Mia Goth stars in a dual role in a movie that pays tribute to Texas Chain Saw Massacre, in its own striking way

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Share All sharing options for: Ti West’s X aims its slasher-movie homage straight at classic horror fanatics

This review of Ti West’s X originally came from the 2022 media expo SXSW. It has been updated for the film’s digital release.

The House of the Devil director Ti West never left horror. It’s been nearly a decade since his last horror movie, The Sacrament , but he’s stayed busy in horror TV, directing episodes of Scream: The TV Series , The Exorcist , Them , and more. He returns to his big-screen roots with X , a deliciously gory, delightfully funny homage to 1970s indie filmmaking that lures viewers into a false sense of security with a fun hangout movie, then unleashes all hell on the screen. By the time the credits roll, it makes sense that A24 would confirm this as the distribution house’s first horror franchise .

In 1979, strip-club owner Wayne (Martin Henderson) decides to gather a group of friends, employees, and a couple of idealistic filmmaking-enthusiast tagalongs to shoot a porn film that will make them all famous . There’s Wayne’s girlfriend Maxine (Mia Goth), Bobby-Lane (Brittany Snow), and Jackson (Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi), who will star in the film. Of course, this won’t be just any old porn film. As writer, director, editor, and cinematographer R.J. (Owen Campbell) explains, he’s here to prove that it’s “possible to make a good dirty movie.” He’s ready to employ avant-garde techniques and everything, and he’s brought along his girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) as boom-mic operator. Of course, given that this is a ragtag production, corners are cut — most notably, the cast and crew are staying at a remote farmhouse owned by an elderly couple who are supposedly unaware of what they’re planning to do. Soon enough, bodies start dropping.

Though the premise of a porn shoot turning into a horror show could easily result in a schlocky parody, Ti West has more in mind. The adult-film angle serves two purposes — it puts a meta spin on the practically mandatory nudity and adult content of R-rated slasher films, and it uses the adult industry to speak about indie filmmaking at large. The first half of the film is a love letter to independent filmmaking, to the satisfactions of grabbing a group of like-minded friends and a camera, and heading to a remote location to make movies. At the Q&A following the film’s SXSW premiere, Ti West spoke about the similarities between horror and porn in the 1970s — specifically, the desire to break free from studio systems and make a name for yourself, with nothing in hand but a good idea.

Given that this is a horror film about a group of young people in Texas, there are clear homages to Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 movie The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , especially in the beginning, where West is following a group of friends having a good time, unaware of the carnage waiting for them. West carefully waits to unveil the carnage, choosing to focus on character work and setting a creepy mood through long takes and ominous cutaways. (The A24 way!) The story isn’t all gloom and doom — West is clearly having a ball making this an enjoyable comedy, too. Double entendres and crude jokes fill the first half of the film, like the team’s van reading “Plowing Services.” Even when the killings begin, most of them have a lighthearted tone.

This is in no small part due to the cast, especially Brittany Snow, whose turn as a wannabe porn star makes for a hilarious return to horror for the actress. Meanwhile, Mescudi does an impressive job as the guy full of bravado and confidence, a veteran who fears nothing, even when he should. Still, this is Mia Goth’s movie: She pulls double duty as both the lead character and as house owner Pearl, subject of a planned spinoff prequel. Goth infuses both characters with a burning desire to obtain fame, and a deep fear of losing it. Even when buried under tons of makeup, her performance shines through.

As funny as X gets at times, however, it’s just as effective at providing scares as it is at provoking laughs. Once the kills begin, West unleashes heavy gore and entertaining death scenes, enhanced by effective, novel editing that West and his co-editor David Kashevaroff use to enhance the scares, or create new ones. From smash cuts and juxtapositions to cutting away from a kill to an unrelated scene to screen wipes and split-screens, X makes for an unpredictable experience.

Sadly, as great as the makeup is, it follows the recent unfortunate trope of villainizing the elderly, implying that aging naturally turns people into vicious villains . Get ready for gratuitous scenes of naked elderly people, designed to suggest that aging is gross and scary.

Tired stereotypes aside, though, West delivers a crowd-pleasing return to horror that’s a love letter to the genre without becoming a parody. This is no Texas Chain Saw Massacre rip-off , but it is still the best Texas Chain Saw Massacre film of the year. Ti West is back — may he not leave us again anytime soon.

X is now widely available for rental or purchase on Amazon , Vudu , and other digital platforms. The prequel, Pearl , is coming to theaters Sept. 16.

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The Slasher Film X Is a Modern Classic

The movie evokes the grind-house energy of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre while also pulling off thoroughly modern cinematic tricks.

A month ago, another installment in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series was released, an attempt to modernize the horror franchise while still harkening back to its gritty 1970s roots. It was a creative failure, too reliant on digitally enhanced gore and thudding callbacks. The task of matching an all-time classic seemed impossible. But a new horror film proves that challenge was hardly insurmountable: Ti West’s X is a lurid slasher based in rural ’70s Texas that brings plenty of invention to a tried-and-true setting.

X blends old and new, rather than just proffering empty references. The film evokes the grind-house energy of the original Texas Chainsaw while also pulling off complicated cinematic tricks that wouldn’t have been possible 50 years ago. West is a director with a deep understanding of period aesthetics—his breakthrough 2009 work, The House of the Devil , was a precise homage to the VHS video nasties of the ’80s; it looked like a once-banned movie that had just been unearthed. X could be another tribute, and even hints at the nasties genre with a teasing prologue in which a local sheriff comes upon a crime scene littered with mysterious film canisters.

West’s latest is titled after the now-defunct rating once given to the most shocking movies; fittingly, the canisters contain a few spicy reels of pornography. X follows a semiprofessional film crew that journeys to a small town to make a skin flick, renting a house on the land of two elderly farmers. Eventually, their shenanigans attract their hosts’ attention, the dynamic turns sour, and characters start to die, but X takes a surprisingly long time to move into slasher territory. West carefully builds out the relationships between each worker on the shoot while incorporating detailed backstory for the creepy older couple, meaning the monstrousness that unfolds later has real narrative purpose.

Read: The most purely enjoyable horror movie made in years

X is spearheaded by a pair of performances by the same actor, Mia Goth, who plays Maxine, one of the stars of the porno, and (buried under pounds of excellent makeup) Pearl, the reclusive older woman who takes an interest in the scandalous goings-on. The dual showcase is a remarkable one for Goth, who previously stood out in supporting roles in Emma , High Life , and A Cure for Wellness . Maxine is headstrong and assured of her future stardom. Pearl is a wispy ghost of a woman, reminiscing on her youthful beauty. West could have easily presented the character as pathetic, or stirred up by an inscrutable demonic fervor, but he instead lets the audience get to know Pearl and her ornery husband, Howard, before the two start chasing the youngsters around the farm.

The other unlucky guests are played by Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Scott Mescudi, and Brittany Snow, each of whom gets to have fun with characters who are vague without being mere cannon fodder. West is genuinely interested in analyzing the clash that takes over the farm, not just between old and young but between the repressed and the liberated; the carnage the couple carry out is motivated by their own confused feelings about sex. In the slashers of yore, an eye-roll-inducing motif was that sexually active characters would be picked off before the heroic virgins. Here, West makes that unspoken rule explicit, and so casts Howard and Pearl’s pent-up fury as all the more unsettling.

Outshining those thematic underpinnings, though, is West’s pure craft; he designs each scare sequence with consummate care, and refrains from using cheap jumps or overwhelming music to push up the tension. X has one of the best “character explores a dark cellar” scenes that I’ve ever seen—a standard of the genre, fine-tuned to perfection here. The set is simple—just two ramshackle homes and a field between them—and the budget seems fairly small, but the richness of West’s script and the depth of his characterization make everything feel expansive. The horror genre has, of late, been hijacked by purportedly “elevated” takes that avoid the simplicity of something like a slasher. X provides a map for how to do the classics right while still taking the formula somewhere original.

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‘X’ Review: Trash, Art and the Movies

Ti West’s latest is a slasher film about the making of a porno film, but the result might not be what you expect.

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By A.O. Scott

“X” is a clever and exuberant throwback to a less innocent time, when movies could be naughty, disreputable and idiosyncratic. Two kinds of movie in particular: the dirty kind and the scary kind. Set in 1979, before the internet made pornography ubiquitous and before anyone was pontificating about “elevated horror,” this sly and nasty picture insists that the flesh and blood of down-and-dirty entertainment is, literally, flesh and blood.

Not that the director, Ti West, is simply replicating the cheap, tawdry thrills of the olden days. West, whose earlier features include “The House of the Devil” and “The Sacrament,” is both a canny craftsman and a genre intellectual. In the midst of the sex and slaughter, he conducts an advanced seminar on visual pleasure and narrative cinema.

And also a brief course in film history, with particular attention to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and shout-outs to “Psycho” and “Debbie Does Dallas.” That X-rated landmark (later adapted into an Off Broadway musical ) provides inspiration for the six Texans who show up at a decrepit farmstead to shoot a hard-core oeuvre called “The Farmer’s Daughters.” The actual farmer, an apparently childless geezer named Howard (Stephen Ure), has rented them a bunkhouse on his property. He and his wife live in the creaky, creepy main house.

The cast and crew consists of three performers — two women and a man, the classic heterosexual porn ratio — a director, a technician and a swaggering entrepreneur who claims the title of executive producer. This guy, Wayne (Martin Henderson), is also romantically attached to one of the stars, Maxine (Mia Goth), who dreams of the Hollywood big time. Her veteran co-stars, Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) and Jackson (Scott Mescudi, also known as the rapper Kid Cudi), are also a couple, as are RJ (Owen Campbell), the director, and Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), who handles the sound and is, at least for a while, the designated prude.

Since “X” is a slasher film, it’s not spoiling anything to note that most of these people will not make it out alive. An ax, a pitchfork and a shotgun are all in easy reach, and for good measure there’s an alligator in the pond. Howard and his wife, Pearl, give off sinister vibes, and West’s knack for zooming, cutting, manipulating point of view and layering sinister sounds creates an unmistakable anticipation of doom.

But the sequence of deaths, the motives for the mayhem and the identity of the survivor may not quite match your expectations. Most notably, the old circuitry connecting horror and female sexuality — canonically diagramed in Carol J. Clover’s 1992 study “Men, Women and Chain Saws” — has been rewired. By the time it’s all over, the film has moved out of period pastiche into interesting new territory, exposing a feminist dimension in the horror tradition that may have been there all along. (Since West is reportedly already at work on a prequel, further exploration may be in store.)

In the meantime, you can sample the familiar, trashy pleasures of sin and skin, with a piquant sprinkling of meta. This is a movie about moviemaking, after all, like “Argo” or “Day for Night” or “Singin’ in the Rain,” and as such it teases the viewer with knowing winks and easy-access insider references.

Many of these come at poor RJ’s expense. With his stringy hair, wispy beard and wet-noodle physique, he’s a film-nerd caricature. He wants to bring experimental techniques — “the way they do in France” — to “The Farmer’s Daughters,” and worries Wayne with his commitment to the avant-garde. Still, he’s not entirely a satirical scapegoat. His sensitivity about the kind of movie he’s actually making (especially once Lorraine sheds her disapproval) isn’t played for laughs. His toast “to independent cinema” is a punchline, but it could also be West’s motto.

When RJ argues against the importance of plot, he has a point, one West both upholds and challenges. Horror and hard-core both use narrative as a flimsy excuse to show the audience the action it really came to see. And while the sex in “X” is strictly R-rated, the movie isn’t shy about appealing to voyeurism. There’s nothing coy or arty about the bloodletting.

The twists of the story — the shifts in attention from Wayne and Maxine and their colleagues to Howard and Pearl — are hardly arbitrary. West, unlike his pornographers, has things to say as well as bodies to show. Most of all, he has an aesthetic that isn’t all about terror or titillation. “X” is full of dreamy, haunting overhead shots and moments of surprising tenderness.

One of these arrives in the middle, while everyone is still alive and wearing clothes, and Bobby-Lynne, accompanied by Jackson on guitar, breaks into a heartfelt rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” (One thing that definitely sets “X” apart from its ’70s influences is a robust budget for musical clearances.) The song serves no narrative end, or any prurient or profound purpose. It’s an unexpected gift. So is “X.”

X Rated R. Not quite what the title promises, but still. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this article misstated where the theatrical production of “Debbie Does Dallas” ran. It was an Off Broadway musical, not a Broadway one.

How we handle corrections

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Considering that sequels to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are still being cranked out, writer-director Ti West ( The House Of The Devil , The Innkeepers ) shows guts in reframing many images from Tobe Hooper ’s 1974 classic early in X . Quite a few of his nods are deliberate misdirections and this has more on its mind than power-tool homage. He also evokes other major horrors — especially Psycho and Hooper’s Chain Saw follow-up, Death Trap , aka Eaten Alive — to build background dread while the main characters think they’re in a comical, down-home Boogie Nights .

The 1970s was an era when young filmmakers who might have made horror films thought there was mileage in arty dirty movies, and older producers were distracted from young flesh by the prospect of big box office. X has fun with the seamy milieu, showcasing bright performances from Brittany Snow and Mia Goth as would-be sex stars, Jenna Ortega as a porn-curious sound recordist (the real sound design, by Graham Reznick, is excellent), and Martin Henderson as a cowboy-hatted Larry Flynt wannabe.

When natural and unnatural desires are awakened on the porno shoot and an aged American-gothic farm couple get involved, the horrors go into overdrive, as X races through its second half with eye-opening (and -piercing) shocks and surprises — funny, horrific, and just plain weird. Many who attempt retro horror fall into the trap of simply imitating their favourite films, but Tobe Hooper, George Romero and Brian De Palma were as hung up on French New Wave, Bergman and underground cinema as Hitchcock and Hammer, and West judiciously stirs in these influences. He uses disorienting editing tricks to ratchet tension, but also holds long, cool shots of folks relaxing in nature, unaware of looming threats — a lake scene with Goth and a gator is liable to be much-cited.

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Waterlogged rescue flick is too intense for kids.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

An arrogant young swimmer learns to support his te

Several violent storms at sea; flashbacks show the

A fairly young couple engages in sexual activity,

One "f--k" several other profanities (&q

Wild Turkey liquor bottle is visible.

Characters drink in bars to get drunk; some vomiti

Parents need to know that this action drama includes several harrowing scenes of storms and sinking boats at sea. Rescue swimmers valiantly try to save victims, but some deaths occur on screen (not bloody, but sad and -- in one case -- quite disturbing). Kids with fears about water should probably see something else…

Positive Messages

An arrogant young swimmer learns to support his team and make hard choices in rescue situations; a lonely veteran swimmer trains youngsters to take up his heroic legacy.

Violence & Scariness

Several violent storms at sea; flashbacks show the dangers of Coast Guard rescue-swimming; a rescuer has to punch a hysterical victim; a couple of rescuers die; a helicopter crashes and explodes; a trainer is punched in the nose and bleeds; a couple of barfights with Navy sailors leave Jake (and then Ben) bloodied and bruised; training is hard (in freezing water, holding breath, swimming to the point of exhaustion).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A fairly young couple engages in sexual activity, including passionate kisses and some playful rolling in bed, wearing underwear and mostly under the covers.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

One "f--k" several other profanities ("damn," "s--t," "a--hole," etc.).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Characters drink in bars to get drunk; some vomiting; Ben chews Vicodins to kill physical and emotional pain; some cigarette smoking.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this action drama includes several harrowing scenes of storms and sinking boats at sea. Rescue swimmers valiantly try to save victims, but some deaths occur on screen (not bloody, but sad and -- in one case -- quite disturbing). Kids with fears about water should probably see something else. Sailors and swimmers argue and draw blood in fistfights. A couple falls in love and is shown kissing and in bed (no explicit sex, but tumbling under blankets and some underwear shots). Protagonists drink, take painkillers, and use occasional profanity. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Another great movie, what's the story.

Kevin Costner stars as Ben Randall, a veteran Coast Guard rescue swimmer who turns to teaching after a traumatic event leaves him unable to carry on as usual. Ben needs to recover his nerve, while cocky student Jake ( Ashton Kutcher ) learn to play nicely with others, including his girlfriend, Emily (Melissa Sagemiller). Both teacher and student have suffered; the revelations of that suffering lead each to his own sort of manly re-commitment. At the rescue-swimming training facility, Ben's red-lit nightmares are compounded by the fact that his long-suffering wife, Helen (Sela Ward), has left him. He self-medicates and grumps at the recruits, and for 18 weeks, drills his trainees hard. Ben's methods occasionally alarm and annoy his fellow instructors, including resentful second-in-command Jack (Neal McDonough) and skeptical presiding officer Larson (John Heard). During his down time, Ben calls Helen to beg forgiveness and helps Jake avenge a beating he received from disdainful Navy sailors. Though the trainees' ranks do include a woman, the focus here is on boys learning to be men. Ben and Jake see themselves in each other, pretty much to the exclusion of anyone else. When Emily suggests to Jake that Ben may be "trying to push you to be better," Jake sets her straight: "He knows I'm better than he is!"

Is It Any Good?

With a retread plot, plenty of boy-bonding action, and a shirtless Ashton Kutcher, this is a by-the-numbers crowd pleaser that's about as dull as a heroic redemption story could be.

Per formula, parallel redemption stories grant "emotional" moments to both Ben and Kutcher's Jake. By the time Jake has his big breakdown scene (he cries, though he doesn't actually say, "I got nowhere else to go!"), it's clear that, for all their earnest, actorly efforts, neither man has a chance against Ron L. Brinkerhoff's hackneyed script.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about ways to deal with trauma. How does the movie make the case that focusing on the future (in the form of students to be taught and lives to be saved) helps Ben overcome his guilt, anger, and frustration? What are other ways -- both successful and unsuccessful -- that people deal with traumatic events? How do Ben and Jake's similarities (ambition, competitiveness, tragic pasts) make them ideal partners? What other movies have used a similar structure (tough veteran mentors young hot shot)? Families can also discuss the work of the Coast Guard, including the unit's heroic rescues on the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 28, 2006
• On DVD or streaming : January 23, 2007
• Cast : Ashton Kutcher , Kevin Costner , Melissa Sagemiller
• Director : Andrew Davis
• Studio : Buena Vista
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 136 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : for intense sequences of action/peril, brief strong language and some sensuality.
• Last updated : November 16, 2023

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The Guardian – Netflix Review (2/5)

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Dec 16, 2021 | 3 minutes

THE GUARDIAN (2021) on Netflix is a new horror-thriller from Vietnam (org. title Thiên Than Ho Menh ). At just over two hours, the runtime is way too long. Production quality is high though. Read our full  The Guardian Netflix movie review here!

THE GUARDIAN (2021) is a new Netflix horror thriller. The story features a doll (or several dolls), which is hardly anything new. However, the part these dolls ultimately play in the movie is quite different.

To me, the real issue of this new Vietnamese horror movie (org. title Thiên Than Ho Menh ), is the slow pace. Also, you should prepare for a few songs throughout this movie. A few of the key characters are singers, so it does happen naturally. But it takes up way too much time for my liking.

Continue reading our The Guardian Netflix movie review below.

Too slow and way too long

As a huge fan of South Korean genre films, I have also watched a few movies from other Asian countries that work remarkably well. The Vietnamese movies, I’ve seen so far on Netflix, have not been all that great.

YOU COULD CHECK OUT Our Netflix review of the Vietnamese horror movie Conjuring Spirit  here >

While the production quality is truly impressive with The Guardian (2021), it just doesn’t have enough story for its runtime. And at just over two hours, the runtime is way too long .

Or rather, the slow pace combined with a long runtime is what made it much less enjoyable for me. I did like some of the twists towards the end. However, I do not need a good 10-15 minutes of various flashbacks to help explain these twists.

Watch  The Guardian  (2021) on Netflix now!

Victor Vu is the director of  The Guardian which was written by himself along with Kay Nguyen ( Furie ). Victor Vu is a Vietnamese-American film director who already has quite a lot of movies on his IMDb resume. I can’t claim that I’m familiar with them, but some of them seem to have similar themes.

Also, as much as I enjoyed some of the twists, I absolutely loathed the final “message”. Essentially, it seems to be shaming young girls into focusing on school instead of chasing their dreams. Not a bad message in itself, but a total victim blaming angle in this particular case.

By now, everyone should know that the whole “if girls just behave, they will be safe”-message is absolute nonsense. As a horror movie, it did have a few moments that made me jump a little. As a thriller, it was hardly very thrilling. Overall, I just wasn’t really entertained by this one.

The Guardian  (org. title Thiên Than Ho Menh ) is out on Netflix from December 16, 2021.

Director: Victor Vu Writers: Victor Vu, Thi Nga, A Type Maxhine, Binh Bong Bot Stars: Amee, Trúc Anh, Salim, Samuel An, Trong Trinh, Thanh Thuy

A tragedy surrounding a pop star propels her backup singer to fame, but the new star is plagued by supernatural occurrences.

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Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

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It’s rare for tenth installments in a successful franchise to correct for the sins of previous films, but it feels like the failure of “ Spiral: From the Book of Saw ” sent the people behind this money-making machine back to the drawing board, resulting in the best “ Saw ” sequel in years. “Saw X” solves a lot of the problems of other films in this franchise by limiting its scope, eliminating some (but not all) of the incoherent plotting, coming up with a few ingenious traps, and really centering the keys to this franchise: Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith . They’re both better here than in any other film in the series, bringing these characters back to life in a way that feels more emotionally resonant than most of the string-pulling they’ve done in past movies. And the punishments seem to fit the crimes here a little better than some of the previous chapters, in which it sometimes felt like the Jigsaw Killer was going to extremes to punish people who might have just had a bad day or didn't call their grandma enough.

This time around, it’s personal. Kevin Greutert ’s film opens with an extended series of dramatic scenes, punctuated by Jigsaw imagining a trap for a potential killer as if the producer’s note read: “We can’t go half an hour without something gnarly.” Outside of that fantasy, the opening act tells of John Kramer (Bell) learning the devastating truth about his mortality diagnosis. If you’re saying, “Wait, didn’t that happen already?” and “Hold on, John Kramer is dead,” you should know that this one takes place between “Saw” and “Saw II,” so Kramer has already become the Jigsaw Killer but isn’t, well, dead yet.

The first act of “Saw X” allows Bell to actually play the drama of coming to terms with an early demise (that fans know would ironically not be the thing that actually kills him). He goes to therapy, where he meets a man ( Michael Beach ) who also has a short time left on Earth. When he runs into the group member later, he’s shocked to learn that the now-healthy chap has been the recipient of a life-saving treatment. The potential for a miracle cure sends Kramer into the web of Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnove Macody Lund), who’s performing brain surgery in Mexico because she needs to do her experiments way off the grid. Of course, Cecilia and the team of professionals around her are part of a horrible con game, bilking dying people out of the fortune they hope to leave to their loved ones and promising the worst kind of false hope. They messed with the wrong guy this time.

The set-ups for previous “Saw” films have often been messy and difficult to follow, but this one is refreshingly simple in that we watch these people do something horrible to John Kramer, and then he locks them in a room to play his games. And fan favorite Amanda (Smith) is there to help things get appropriately nasty with a few of Jigsaw’s most elaborate devices. Before you know it, someone is using an intestine as a rope, and another victim is performing brain surgery on themselves. At least the first few traps have a clever synergy in that the people who faked surgery now have to actually do it. All of the traps are more interestingly designed and executed than most of the sequels.

But what really makes the bulk of “Saw X” effective is how openly Kramer and Amanda are involved in the action. There’s significantly less “man behind the curtain” action as Kramer makes his motives and the stakes clear—two things that have often been muddled in this franchise. And that choice allows Bell to really dig into the role with more screen time than ever, somehow making John Kramer sympathetic while he’s torturing people. Smith doesn’t have quite as much to do, but she sells a few nice beats because she understands this franchise and what it needs to work.

That was the problem with so many recent “Saw” installments. They got away from what worked by being cluttered with characters that no one cared about learning lessons that seemed kind of poorly taught. It’s impossible to say that “Saw X” goes back to the basics because that would involve just two people in a room with an actual saw, but there’s something more grounded about this film than any of the other sequels. "Saw X" returns John Kramer to the root of his mission, showing people the error of their ways and asking them what it truly means to be alive. A few severed limbs along the way are just a bonus. 

Now playing in theaters. 

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film Credits

Saw X (2023)

Rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, language and some drug use.

118 minutes

Tobin Bell as John Kramer / Jigsaw

Shawnee Smith as Amanda Young

Synnøve Macody Lund as Dr. Cecilia Pederson

Renata Vaca as Gabriela

Paulette Hernández as Valentina

Octavio Hinojosa Martínez as Mateo

Steven Brand as Detective Parker Sears

Michael Beach as Henry Kessler

Joshua Okamoto as Diego

Costas Mandylor as Mark Hoffman

David Alfano as Doctor

Donagh Gordon as Dr. Finn Pederson

Baltimore Beltrán as Carlos Dad

Isan Beomhyun Lee as Custodian

• Kevin Greutert
• Josh Stolberg
• Pete Goldfinger

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• Charlie Clouser

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Scoop review – Rufus Sewell and Billie Piper shine in Prince Andrew drama

The Crown director Philip Martin’s dynamic recreation of the notorious Newsnight interview has two jewels among its acting

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In the role of Prince Andrew , an almost unrecognisable Rufus Sewell has a clammy, greying complexion that looks like day-old Balmoral porridge. But it’s not so much the physical transformation that so uncannily evokes the late queen’s purportedly favourite son, but the air of prickly petulant delusion that Sewell captures – he’s a man accustomed to cringing deference, something that he routinely confuses with respect.

Television director Philip Martin ( The Crown ) brings a nervy unease to Scoop , a journalistic procedural about the incendiary Newsnight interview in which Emily Maitlis ( Gillian Anderson ) handed HRH his crown jewels on a silver platter. It’s a film about tenacious female journalists striving to bring a man to account for his actions, and in this, there’s an obvious parallel with Maria Schrader ’s She Said , about two New York Times reporters’ quest to break the Harvey Weinstein story. But the picture is also perceptive on the dynamics of a newsroom under duress, with Billie Piper terrific as Sam McAlister, the straight-talking producer who managed to land the interview to end all royal interviews.

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for a... Read all Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike. Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

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• May 10, 2024 (United States)
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The Idea of You Is Premium Grade Fanfic

By Richard Lawson

Forget comic books and old TV shows. The most fecund I.P. these days might be Harry Styles fan fiction, which inspired the sleeper-success After franchise (which includes a film called After Ever Happy , a title that would make even Lewis Carroll scratch his head) and now The Idea of You , a romantic drama based on the novel by Robinne Lee (Amazon Prime Video, May 2). To be fair, Lee has said that the dashing young pop-star swain at the center of her story is an amalgam of many British idols. But the Styles of it all really jumps out.

Hayes Campbell is the tattooed breakout star of a boyband beloved, both sincerely and ironically, by legions of young fans. He is about to embark on a solo career, in which he will get more artful and serious. He likes to date older women. In Michael Showalter ’s film, Hayes is played by Nicholas Galitzine , the Brit hunk who recently made hearts flutter in the gay rich-boy romance Red, White & Royal Blue . Galitzine does not have Styles’s same sly-fox bearing, but he’ll certainly do in a pinch.

He’s charming enough to easily ensnare 40-year-old Solène ( Anne Hathaway ), a Los Angeles gallery owner who has a chance encounter with Hayes while escorting her daughter, Izzy ( Ella Rubin ), to Coachella. Solène mistakes Hayes’s trailer for the VIP restroom, they meet cute, and a whirlwind romance ensues.

This is happily silly stuff, and yet to the great credit of Showalter and his co-writer Jennifer Westfeldt , it’s all taken pretty seriously. There is some com to go along with the rom, but this is, for the most part, a poignant story of a taboo love affair’s rises and falls. Stylishly shot (by Jim Frohna ) and scored (by Siddhartha Khosla ), The Idea of You has an insistent pull. It’s alluring and rousing in all the right ways; it indulges and complicates fantasy.

Hathaway is poised and gathered even when she is losing herself to erotic ecstasy. There's a proper adultness about her, which is necessary to the whole conceit. Were Solène some flustered movie creation, reacting to these strange circumstances in all the predictable self-consciously antic ways, the movie would spin out into absurdity. But Hathaway holds it down, selling us on each of Solène’s choices as she tries to be practical about being reckless.

There could be more fleshing out of the time between a private first kiss (a disarmingly quiet scene that yields loud results) and a public fling. There would probably be more hesitation, more negotiation than we see in the film. But Showalter is too intent on sweeping us away to get bogged down in pesky exposition. Hayes, 24 and clever and kind, is more squeaky-clean than any real-life counterpoint would likely be, which may be an evasive bit of movie magic. Or, one might choose to buy that this lonely guy is as decent as he is—there’s even some dialogue to bolster the argument.

By Anthony Breznican

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The Idea of You is far more considerate to its characters than a lot of its streaming brethren are to theirs. The writing is sharp, direct, pitched in a credible cadence. As the movie goes, it takes a pause from the swoon to examine the impossible hell of fame. Answers are not as easy as one might expect, there are consequences to flights of fancy. The movie does not float by weightlessly.

But, it’s mostly fun. It’s hotel-room trysts and private-jet canoodling, underscored by the heady feeling that this is all a sadly fleeting dream, stolen away from reality. The movie is not a sex-fest, but, much like the new film Challengers , it runs on the energy of implied sex, of passion guiding people to deeper experience. Showalter would seem an odd fit for this material, but he steers the film gracefully, at a rhythm both charged and languorous. Most crucially, the material is never condescended to, any wryness about the crazy thing happening to Solène is properly contextualized. The Idea of You is laughed with, not at.

That care is evident in the film’s finer details, too. The songs written (by Savan Kotecha ) for Hayes’s band, August Moon, are believable bops. Solène has a lovely Craftsman home that is meant to be humble but plays instead as high real-estate porn. (The house is located in that famous part of Los Angeles that looks suspiciously like Atlanta.) Reid Scott does a funny turn as Solène’s caddish ex-husband; his mild comeuppance earned applause from the boisterous audience at the film’s New York premiere. There’s a lot of pleasing texture here; the film is by no means a lazy toss-off.

So why not give this lovingly built movie—the rare elegant piece of fan service—a proper theatrical release? After the surprising box office success of Anyone but You , it would be nice to see another romance pick up the baton and make another run for it. The Idea of You is glossy and smart, a cut above the slop so often served to its intended audience. It may force a neat ending, it may strain logic, it may leave some intriguing avenues unexplored, but The Idea of You is otherwise transporting, a fairy tale worthy of a big screen. Maybe the sequel I’ve just dreamt up, in which Hayes heads to Venice to promote a controversy-laden sci-fi movie with someone resembling Florence Pugh , will be given its fair due—spit and all.

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Lassie: A New Adventure review – canine crusader is star of quaint family fun

Eponymous hero tackles a pooch-pinching operation by getting captured in this old-fashioned production

I n some ways, the Lassie films are like the canine answer to the James Bond series. Both have literary antecedents, both have been big screen successes for MGM, and the basic formula remains essentially the same: a hero saves the day. The equivalent of Sean Connery is probably Pal, the rough collie dog who portrayed Lassie in seven feature films in the 1940s and 1950s. In Lassie: A New Adventure, Lassie is played by Bandit, who brings what is needed to the role, in a slick, handsome, functional way that suggests the Lassie franchise is perhaps in its Pierce Brosnan era, though unfortunately more Die Another Day doldrums than GoldenEye high point.

It bears mentioning at this point that the film is more properly titled Lassie – Ein Neues Abenteuer; this is a German production which has been fairly obviously dubbed into English, with the same director (Hanno Olderdissen) and human lead actor (Nico Marischka) as Lassie Come Home from 2020, also a German production. The premise is simple and straightforward: a nefarious couple have been pinching pooches, the aim of their dognapping operation being to auction off the luckless hounds to the highest bidder. When Lassie’s pal Pippa is snatched, Lassie deploys the time-honoured strategy of deliberately getting captured, and everything works out exactly as you might expect; this is not a film interested in surprising the viewer, and is very much made with younger audiences in mind.

As far as that goes, it’s a wholesome enough way to pass 90 minutes, though depending on how media-saturated the family viewers in question are, it may feel rather quaint and old-fashioned. Compared to savvier family fare available (see: The Mitchells vs the Machines , the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, or even the existential dread of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish), it is all incredibly well behaved, with the human characters failing to offer much interest, despite a well-meaning arc about foster care, and some game performances from the villains. Perhaps it’s time for Lassie to explore a Daniel Craig-era pivot to a slightly more sophisticated offering.

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