If You Want a Slasher Movie to Remind You to Enjoy Life While You Can — That Movie Is Ti West’s ‘X’
A major theme in X is the regrets of the elderly Pearl character and the young character’s determination to seize the moment and embrace life while they can.
X is a 2022 slasher movie written and directed by Ti West. Inspired by iconic horror films and set in 1979, the film feels like it was made during the golden age of slasher movies. X follows a group of young people who plan to get rich and famous by making an adult movie. Wayne (Martin Henderson) is producing the film and his girlfriend, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), is starring along with her coworker Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow). Bobby-Lynne’s “sometimes” boyfriend Jackson Hole (Kid Cudi) is the male star. RJ (Owen Campbell) is the director, and his girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) is along to assist him. Wayne manages Maxine and Bobby-Lynne at the Bayou Burlesque strip club.
The group road-trips to rural Texas to procure a cheap location to shoot their movie. In an economically depressed county, they rent a bunkhouse on a farm from an elderly couple, Howard and Pearl. As day turns to night, the crew runs afoul of their hosts.
One major theme in X is the regrets of the elderly Pearl character and the young character’s determination to seize the moment and embrace life while they can.
Pearl is shown to be jealous of Maxine, who has the “X factor” that Pearl claims she used to have when she was a young woman who hoped to be a dancer. Pearl laments that she is no longer young and beautiful and doesn’t feel “special” like she once did. After meeting Maxine, the next time we see Pearl she is wearing Maxine’s trademark blue eyeshadow.
The young characters, on the other hand, are open about wanting to live a life without regrets. Bobby-Lynne advises Lorraine not to buy into religious rhetoric about sex because “one day, we’re gonna be too old to f-ck. And life’s too short if you ask me.” Afterwards, Jackson toasts to “livin’ a life of excess. To being young and having fun until the day we die.”
This theme is exemplified by the song Bobby-Lynne and Jackson choose to play, Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide,” a song about choosing between a fear of regrets or following your dream. Later, when RJ decides to leave in the middle of the night, the song “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult plays. Not only does this song foreshadow RJ’s imminent demise (the literal Reaper coming for him), it also fits the theme of living life without regrets while you are young. The song’s lyrics remind us that while death is assured for everyone, we have to live life anyway just like the “seasons don’t fear the Reaper.”
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