Review: XX (2017)

XX (2017)

Rated R for horror violence, language and brief drug use

Score: 3 out of 5

First impressions are everything, and that is true in film as much as it is elsewhere. In the case of XX, a horror anthology composed of four short films whose unifying element is that they are each written and directed by female filmmakers, it gets off to a poor start by opening with its weakest segment, setting itself up for potential failure by putting its worst foot forward. While the other three segments, especially the last two, were easily enough to redeem the film in my eyes, I can sadly see why somebody might turn this off in frustration twenty minutes in, expecting the rest of the film to be garbage. However, if you're willing to sit out the film's opening act, you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised by what follows, which is an effective horror mashup that crosses over several genres and showcases the talents of a number of filmmakers.

With a series of stop-motion animated segments by Sofia Carrillo tying it together, this film is divided into four parts, each of them written and directed by a different woman. The first, Jovanka Vuckovic's "The Box", adapts a Jack Ketchum short story in which a young boy named Danny, after looking into a gift box carried by a stranger on a train, suddenly stops eating, much to the confusion and (as he grows increasingly emaciated) eventual desperation of his parents Susan and Robert -- especially once his sister Jenny, and eventually Robert himself, also stop eating after he tells them what he saw in the box. The second, the black comedy "The Birthday Party", carries the most star power attached on both sides of the camera, being directed and co-written by Annie Clark (aka the musician St. Vincent) and starring Melanie Lynskey as Mary, a housewife who finds her husband dead of an apparent suicide on the day of her daughter's birthday party, and now must find a way to deal with the body without ruining the impending party. Roxanne Benjamin created the third segment, "Don't Fall", a story about four friends on a hiking trip in the desert who find themselves stalked by a monster. Finally, Karyn Kusuma wrote and directed "Her Only Living Son", about a divorced mother named Cora and her teenage son Andy who have moved out to the sticks to get away from Cora's Hollywood bigshot ex-husband, only for her to find that her son is causing trouble at school and at home when she isn't looking -- but when she looks for help in controlling her troubled son, nobody seems to find anything wrong with his behavior, with everybody instead telling her that he is a remarkable boy who has great things in his future.

I'll start with "The Box", both because it's the weakest segment by far and because it's how the film opens. For much of its runtime, "The Box" seemed to be going for a near-Lovecraftian vibe, as the question of what is in the box hangs over the proceedings; my interpretation was that it was either some monster or some terrible secret, especially given how Danny says that there was "nothing" in there and how bitterly he resists being fed. The metaphor for anorexia was on the nose, but definitely (pardon the pun) biting; I felt Susan's frustration watching what was happening to her son. Unfortunately, the film takes a turn for the worse by the end, with a bizarre, gory nightmare sequence that tells the viewer little and a cliffhanger ending that leaves the entire mystery unsolved. While the special effects in that sequence were stomach-churning, the segment as a whole felt empty and too opaque, like it was hinting at bigger ideas but didn't know how to follow through on them. The worst thing about it was that it set the tone for the film that followed, practically killing my expectations for this right out of the gate. The second segment "The Birthday Party" was a lightweight, entertaining palate-cleanser with a hilarious ending, as I would've expected given its creator's musical output, but it wasn't enough to get the bad taste of "The Box" out of my head.

It is fortunate, then, that the second half of the film boasted "Don't Fall" and "Her Only Living Son". "Don't Fall" is a good old-fashioned monster movie that employs some great practical effects work for the monster, one of the people in the group who has been transformed into a wendigo-like beast after getting stung by something in front of some paleolithic artwork that she and her friends discovered. It doesn't offer much more than a body count, but it delivers with style and flair. The best of the four segments, and probably the one with the most real depth, is "Her Only Living Son", which can be thought of as a spiritual sequel to one classic horror film in particular (one that I have reviewed here, in fact)... but for the sake of not giving away the twist, I won't say what. I will say that the story leans heavily on metaphors for the influence that parents have on their children, as Cora seeks to prevent Andy from turning out like the father she ran away from. Combine it with some troubling unchildlike behavior from Andy and the reveal concerning the nature of Andy's father, and you've got a pretty creative mini-horror flick that ends this anthology on a high note.

And even at the film's worst, each of the four directors here proves highly competent on a purely technical level. "The Box" may have suffered from a story that felt unfinished, but Vuckovic successfully creates an aura of dread until the problems with the writing catch up with it, especially with that disturbing nightmare sequence that would've made the segment far more effective had it ended there instead of kept going. Clark's first-time effort as a director on "The Birthday Party" did a surprisingly good job building upon its increasingly ridiculous situation all the way up to a great finish, Benjamin clearly loved to show off the monster in "Don't Fall", and Kusama made Andy's out-of-control behavior, and the oddly supportive reaction of those around him, feel eerily unnatural in "Her Only Living Son". The actors all shine, and even during "The Box" they typically didn't stain themselves in the process. The stop-motion animated segments that serve as a wraparound to unify the film don't have much to do with the rest of it, and often felt like weirdness for weirdness' sake that was fairly hard to follow, but they worked a lot better when it came to establishing the weird atmosphere of the film. (Maybe I'm just biased towards stop-motion, though.)

The Bottom Line

This is a film that took some time to grow on me, and probably could've stood to swap the places of "The Box" and "Don't Fall" (front-load the film with the visceral monster movie, put the weird psychological horror in the deep cuts). But once I started grooving to it, I wanted to see what each of these stories had to offer. Recommended for fans of offbeat horror.