Over the past decade, A24 Films has carved a niche for themselves among genre fans, as releases like Enemy, It Comes at Night, Hereditary, and The Lighthouse marked ambitious approaches to genre storytelling that were a far cry from what audiences would expect from mainstream releases. Their latest horror film, X, takes a similar approach to unraveling a horror story, though while it will surely be lumped into the ambiguous and dismissive label of “elevated horror,” it comes from writer/director Ti West, who was been delivering these circumventions of tonal expectations since back in the days when such approaches were called “mumblegore.” However audiences might attempt to pigeonhole the final product, X makes for a life-affirming and unsettling exploration of our own mortality, a grim reminder of the destination we’re all headed to eventually, regardless of how explosive or underwhelming that descent might be.
