X - A Marca da Morte

I liked it. It's a nice old-fashioned (flawlessly 70's styled) slasher horror-flick, with a fairly original premise. As in any comparable horror movie the motives for the killings are pretty farfetched, but who cares, when they are pictured so relentlessley gruesome, the gore here is definitely not for the tender-hearted. Another strong point is how the movie very gradually builds up the tension, this is a real slow burner, the apprehension of looming doom is palpable throughout the movie. This is helped by a strong direction, a very clever and inventive editing, and some great photography, see for instance the scene of one of the girls swimming in the lake, while... well, I won't give it away, but it's beautiful and hair-raisingly scary at the same time!

Add to all this some very funny dialogues and goings-on at the start, and you're in for a well made, old-school horror flick, maybe not life-changing but absolutely entertaining for those who can apprciate this kind of movie (like me!).

Zero expectations or knowledge about this movie when I turned this one on. I knew it was a horror movie and that was it. Watching it, I could feel the love that the creators had for the old age of horror movies, the era of slashers and all the things that Scream once dissected and made light of, an age of horror movie rules where you expect sex to equal death and the final girl to surmount all odds and take on the horrible entity terrorizing them.

The idea of this movie seems like something I should have really enjoyed. The reality of it was more underwhelming. I never found myself connecting to the characters, so when things start to go awry, I had no investment in their existence. They were just red shirts in a horror movie. I expected them to die and most of them met that expectation. It was fine. It never really tipped the scales into love, never into hate, it lingered in the realm of quiet acceptance of what was going on, a positive tolerance that never reached proper enjoyment.

I originally watched this film as an introduction to Mia Goth's acting, which I must say is incredible this film. I was thrilled to see such a star studded cast including Jenna Ortega and Brittany Snow. That being said I think the writing did not live up to the casts potential. If you are looking for a nostalgic 70's/80's style slasher film, this might fit the bill. Motives of characters in this film left a lot to be explained and fell short in my eyes. That being said, this film serves as the introductory film to the prequel, "Pearl" which is far more better excecuted and "X" is totally worth the watch just to experience "Pearl" in all it's glory. Overall, his film was good but not great. However, I look forward to the character development in the partner films surrounding this plot line.

A decent slasher, but does not deserve a 96% rating on RT. The kills felt conveniently cheap and honestly everything was underwhelming. I was hoping to to feel paranoid or scared, but didn't feel much of anything. Spent most of the movie hoping it would get better or surprise me a little but we've seen this all before.

I can't with movies full of characters that just walk around without any instinct doing the absolute dumbest things they could possibly choose before they're murdered. It's literally the whole movie. The 'action and gore' is actually pretty tame. The sex is explicit. The characters are idiots.