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Writer & Director – Ti West

2022, US

Stars – Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow

 

The opening fly-buzz acknowledges ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’: 1979, somewhere in Grindhouse Hicksville, Texas, where a group of people hire a property next to a creepy house owned by creepy old folk to make an arty(?) porn movie. There are no true story surprises, but Ti West is one of the best at capturing not only period look, but the feel of the films being pastiched. Being true to the spirit of its chosen era, it even stops to let Brittany Snow pick up an acoustic guitar for a song.

 

So what it lacks in originality, it makes up for with details like the opening ratio gag, some vivid editing and shooting and crowd-pleasing gore and violence. The first killing unsettles in its length, and other killings are perhaps less impressive and a killing to "Don't Fear the Reaper" is groan worthy, but by that time, a lot of goodwill has been built up by the slow burn, period homage and mood.  It’s true value is in the strength of its characterisation, which is what Ti West is reliable for. Here’s a small band of porn-makers which, typically, would have been annoying sleazeballs, except for the more innocent/reticent wallflower girl. But here the producer guy Wayne (Martin Henderson) is not just a lecherous manipulative hustler, and Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) isn’t just an annoying sex-crazed vamp, and Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) isn’t simply a disapproving thrill-killer in over her head. And there’s a hint of Nice Guy about RJ (Owen Campbell; obviously one to watch with ‘My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It Too’). There’s complexity to their relationships. It’s layered characterisation, without trying to make them conflicted or apologetic, is quietly subversive. West isn’t sleazy, and although he obviously enjoys exploitation, the quality of the filmmaking – the initial sequence introducing the alligator has been rightly celebrated – and writing rises above just that. But that isn’t to say he scrimps on the nastiness and bloodletting: the first kill is particularly gnarly.

 

But it’s with Mia Goth and her remarkable freckles where the true meat of it emerges. Especially when you discover she plays both Maxine and Pearl. I did not know this going in or realised during. But once I knew this, it only reenforced the themes already obvious, about fear of loss of desirability; about a sex drive outlasting the body. This is a film where getting old makes you murderous when desire and body are no longer in accord. Here comes a bitter old couple, torn between an evangelical television and a group of adults in their prime gleefully making a sex movie. But with the same actor playing both Maxine and Pearl, the picture deepens further: in retrospect, Maxine seems quietly more the disturbed one, snorting drugs and conflating a big sex drive with ambition and fame; Pearl becomes the natural twisted outcome of Maxine’s getting old and not having this satisfied. It's as if this group has been caught in her porny fever dream where, as is the way with slashers, sexual dysfunction emerges as homicidal cum-shots. And without fiercely trumpeting as such, this is a woman’s film (see how the men die first?).

 

This is the truly intriguing stuff, but the film is otherwise simply good slasher fun with superior writing and execution. All this means that already pending prequel, ‘Pearl’, already feels like more than just a cash-in. Although it doesn’t truly transcend its basic genre pleasures, and may be seen as an underachiever for that, it’s certainly exploitation for those that like their horror with reflective pretentions. And did I mention fun?