By CULLEN MURRIN, Staff Writer
I recently watched the movie “X” at the theater, and it was deeply disturbing. It follows a group of
filmmakers as they set out to make an independent adult film. They rent out a farmhouse on the
property of an old Texas couple, who don’t know what they are going to be doing there. This is a
film about the sorrow of being old.
As her guests get busy with their filming, the old woman creeps about and watches. She misses
her life before she was old. When she was beautiful. She misses intimacy, and can’t get it with her
husband anymore, whose heart couldn’t take the effort. As the film goes on, the old woman begins
to feel a burning hatred for and jealousy toward the young film crew, and begins to kill each of
them one at a time.
She is old and unable and hates them for having and doing what she no longer has or can. This
movie was well made and very, very effective. I felt extreme sorrow for the old woman, even while
she brutally murdered the younger cast of characters. It made me not want to get old.
There were some seriously intense and unsettling sequences in the movie as well. In one scene
the woman sneaks into one of her guest’s bedrooms, strips off her clothes, and climbs into bed
with her. The music sounds like a loud, thumping heartbeat. The woman had already killed one of
the group before this, so I was left to wonder if she would just lay with the girl, or lay with her and
then kill her. She caresses the girl’s body until she wakes and lets out a horrified and disgusted
scream.
The movie also had a few moments that made me laugh as well, which thankfully lightened the
mood a bit. “X” is a very effective and intense horror movie, and I took the experience of seeing it
with me. It showed a broken and unhappy woman who feels the way she does because she can’t
look in the mirror and think that she’s pretty anymore. She can’t do the things she used to. She
just exists now. Seeing her in that state and seeing the effects of it on other people was both
saddening and scary.
