XX

I'm sorry to report that this year's "XX" doesn't quite live up to the great horror anthology that its trailer promises. This quarter of female-directed horror shorts is actually quite average, when considered together, and I'd give it a 6 out of 10.

Only the first segment is truly memorable — "The Box," adapted from a short story by Jack Ketchum. The directing and scoring is superb. (Seriously, the music is quite good.) The acting is also good throughout this segment, most especially by "The Strain's" Natalie Brown. She's a good actress and she's starting to grow on me. (And her memorable last lines here, which I assume come from the text of Ketchum's story, are weird and haunting.) This quarter of "XX" gets under your skin.

Despite "The Box" being capably developed and unnerving, however, there were no conventional scares at all. It hardly felt like a horror short; it was more like a particularly macabre and ambiguous parable. Nor is the story's mystery solved — it's left open-ended.

The second segment is largely a waste of time, despite being stylishly shot and scored. (Hint: it's got the same story device as "Weekend at Bernie's.")

The remaining two tales are more standard horror stories. I'd suggest they are somewhat fair at best.

I think I would recommend this only to the most well rounded horror fans who are in the mood for something different. And, even then, it might only be for the peculiar elements of "The Box."

Four short horror films, no linking narrative, although there is some decent Svankmajeresque stop-motion animation serving as transition:

A boy loses his appetite after getting a glimpse of something mysterious; a woman discovers her husband's corpse on the day of her daughter's birthday; four attractive young people discover an Ancient Evil (TM) in the wilderness; and a mother deals with the discovery that her nearly adult son is disturbingly violent and yet everybody worships the ground he walks on.

Production values tend to adequate-high, and effects are acceptable, but there are small issues with each section that leave the overall film feeling amateurish. They're generally small issues, and I expect the filmmakers to work them out for their next projects.

Narratives are disappointing, generally from the lack of resolution-- although inconsistent characterization and unimaginable motives plague the second, making it the weakest. I can enjoy unresolved horror shorts in general, but it doesn't work here, not with the way these films are implemented; there's too much dragging along at each end, suggesting a reveal that never materializes.

The first was my favorite, and I found it generally creepy, although, again, the resolution was handled poorly; there were also some instances of poor acting, and too much voice-over exposition.

The "theme" of XX is apparently that all four films were directed by women, but there's not really any significance to that. If the title wasn't so eager to let me know, I wouldn't have realized it, and it kind of feels like painting a handgun pink for marketing purposes, a little dubious. Still, it's not a big deal to me, just a title. But after knowing, a few things stand out: the inversion of stereotypes for the parents in the first film; the unwillingness to commit to any crazy-lady characterization in the second, even though that's the only thing that would give the story even a lick of sense; the self-important and overly long soliloquy in the final film. (The only thing that maybe stands out in the third is that none of the attractive young people decide to disrobe, as they do so often in similar films.)

I'd say that the first film is probably worth watching, but I wouldn't bother watching past that. Not worth paying money for. Still, there's no reason not to expect good things from the filmmakers in the future, as they find some better scripts and improve their techniques.

The dolls and walking boxes inbetween the stories were much more unsettling than any of the four bland stories. I would rate the doll segments as a 6 and the stories as a 2 so overall a 4.

I don't judge people based on their gender so I really didn't care if this movie was directed by women or not. But I do care about cinematography and storytelling aspects and for that reason I have to cast a somewhat harsh judgment.

So, the movie consists of 4 equally long parts, each explores a different type of horror. There is no coherency between the stories, all of them are fully independent.

The first story was obviously the best one. I really liked it and would have liked a full feature movie about it. There was a lot of untapped potential there. Considering how the first scene ("The Box") established some sort of norm on which I started forming expectations. It suffices to say that what followed didn't quite live up to these expectations. The second story ("Birthday Party") was in fact the exact opposite. It wasn't scary, it was just weird. Since I don't want to spoil anything I'll just leave it at that. It was by far the weakest link in this anthology. "Don't Fall" was also pretty scary but a little too one-dimensional for my personal taste. There was virtually no character development in that story. And last but not least there was "Her Only Living Son". This story was clearly an homage to Rosemary's baby. And while Rosemary's Baby is in my opinion one of the greatest Horror movies ever made this story was rather comical in nature. The reason why this story didn't quite manage to instill fear and true horror can probably be attributed to the fact that the protagonists physical transformation/metamorphosis was just too stereotypical to be considered horrifying/scary.

I really, really wanted to like this. It features Melanie Linskey, after all! I love everything she's in! And I was excited to see an anthology of horror tales told by women. After all, no one knows the horrors of life more than women.

But this was just... not it.

Each segment was meh, in my honest opinion. Just. Meh. I think they all had the potential to be great, but it didn't seem like they had the right direction. Perhaps if they had had better cinematography, a better score. Or if they had been the kind of stories that reward the viewer for paying attention by setting up clues that lead up to some grand reveal...

Instead, it all felt unseasoned. Very disappointed.