Oh boy, do I hate this... *sigh* movie. I'm so angry that it's going to be difficult for me to stay reasonable in this review, but the complete and utter bumbling ignorance of 'XX' might conclude to be the worst horror film I've ever seen. Chances are you haven't heard of this movie and neither had I, until I stumbled across it when I was casually browsing Netflix at 1:00 in the morning. I was in the mood for some "horror" and had a quick look on IMDb, when I noticed the alluring clickbait poster. The user score was very low, but I noticed the metascore of 64 and came to the conclusion that it can't be... THAT bad. Surely...*cough* So, 'XX' is a horror anthology movie. If you don't know what an anthology movie is, it's a collection of short films that usually tend to have some kind of link to one another, in terms of genre, tone, premise, Etc. Etc. The four short films in 'XX' have no link, other than the fact that they're horror stories. Well, and one other thing. 'XX' isn't just called "XX" because 2 x's next to each other look scary. What it actually represents... is the chromosome... that makes you a lady. 'XX' The front cover depicts a lipstick kiss with a scary skull on it. The tagline is, "Four deadly tales by four killer women." That's the gimmick of the movie, that the four stories were all directed by women and all supposedly offer a unique female perspective. I'd argue that when you actually sit down and watch each of the short films that this premise is not used as a crutch at all really. In fact, if the marketing didn't make it abundantly clear that this is some kind of feminist thing then I doubt you'd even notice. I found an incredibly awkward interview of some of the directors of the segments all talk about how everyone hates women or whatever and it made me wonder if the claim that... [Jovanka Vuckovic]
We noticed women being passed over for all the jobs and all the other anthologies that were coming out and so, we decided to make one of our own. So 'XX' was created in direct response to the lack of opportunities for women in film particularly in the horror genre. [IHE]
was actually true. I realized that there are far more men working in film than there are women but the claim that horror movies don't offer opportunities for women... seems a little strange to me. In fact, some of the most influential horror films have women as the main characters or at least really important characters. But let's not split hairs over this because honestly, I didn't even think about this film's agenda while watching it. Now obviously, I do not care what gender the director of a movie is. In fact, I care more about making a video on Mars Bars more than caring about that. And... I really don't care about making a video on Mars bars at all. So, please take note that this is not an attack on this project simply because it's empowering women in this medium. That is not the problem at all, in fact, it's a decent idea, because there are clearly not enough female directors working in film today. Who are the most popular male directors alive at the moment? Hmm. I suppose there's Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, Zack Snyder, Woody Allen Tim Burton, David Lynch, Clint Eastwood Ridley Scott, Edgar Wright, Peter Jackson-- Paul Thomas Anderson, the good one. Paul W. S. Anderson, the bad one. Wes Anderson... That's whole lot of Anderson's... Now, let's flip that over and try and tell me how many popular female directors you can think of. From the top of your head. Okay? Go. Well there's uh... James Cameron's ex-wife. Everyone knows her. Everyone likes her movies. Uhh... I think a lady directed that film 'Raw.' That was pretty good. Who else is there? [Stone sliding against stone] Now, come on Kite-Man; that's cheating. But the point is, when you search "film directors" into Google, you have to scroll past 20 dudes to get to the first woman and out of 51 odd directors featured at the top here, there are only five women. Unless I counted wrong. Which is quite likely. Let me stress, I do not have an agenda here. I'm simply stating the fact that there are not very many female directors compared to the amount of male directors. The reason I'm highlighting this is because I cannot stress enough that I'm not criticizing the gender of the directors. I do not give a single fuck I actually think this is kind of a good idea. But what I am doing, is just criticizing four terrible, embarrassing, piece-of-shit, short films that were clumsily strung together into a bad horror anthology that I equally would have hated if the same short films were made by men. That is ALL. I have no choice but to acknowledge this because of the way the film was being sold and I'd rather not be attacked by Tumblr Fuck off Tumblr. Now, before we properly dive into these films, let me just warn you that if you're very, very, easily scared, this might not be the video for you. I personally don't think anything about these films is very frightening, besides their awfulness of course, but consider yourself warned. So, let's start with the first thing you'll be greeted with when you start up 'XX' a bunch of pointless, stop-motion, SpOoKy~ visuals. I normally dislike the word "pretentious," but this comes across to me as nothing but pretentious, amateur, student film drivel. It's only purpose is to offer vague, eerie, expected visual noise using the pretense of horror to get away with this lack of depth and also happens to act as the interlude between the four short films. I'm willing to accept that, perhaps, I just... didn't get it, and that I should just take it for being... cool and... epic looking... and spooky. But these sections, to me, were completely meaningless visuals that seem like they belong in a creepypasta video before they do a movie that's supposed to convey a coherent atmosphere mood, characters, and story or other very least, you know... scare me. My reaction after every one of them finished was to say The horror anthology movie, 'VHS,' while not being particularly good in my eyes but not without its moments, at least attempted to provide some kind of context as to why these admittedly unrelated stories were presented in the same movie. By having some people stumble across some old videotapes in a creepy house and watching them *along* with the audience as the narrative device; to attempt to give it some kind of structure. Not a bunch of pointless visuals that have no link or through-line to the rest of the movie. [Fart] "The Box" So, the first actual short film is called, "The Box." It's an interesting idea that's let down by the lack of development on all fronts; Flat direction and camerawork, *atrocious* acting, Woman: Okay. And the ultimate frustration of it not being remotely... SCARY. The basic premise is that while a family are on a train, a creepy guy who looks a bit like the late Robin Williams sits next to them with a... ...big red present. The kid asks "What's in the present?" and the guy lets him have a peek. You do not get to see what's in it. I wish I knew what was in it... Later on when the family or at the dinner table, the kid who looked in the box says he's not hungry. You? Not hungry? You're always hungry! To give it a little credit the little girl is surprisingly decent for a kid actor in this scene. In other scenes, she's pretty bad though. So I don't even know why I stopped this review to even make this point. To be honest, the main problem is the awkward, clunky dialogue, and the bizarre way it's delivered. Sure. But I want those teeth brushed. Yeah dad. So as time goes on we have more and more and more dinner scenes We notice that the little boy is refusing to eat anything, even spaghetti, which he loves You love spaghetti. I wonder if all this had anything to do with the suspicious-looking guy with the red present... hmmmm Days pass, and they don't take him to hospital. They just get angry at him. Goddammit, will you just EAT! I'm not hungry! Then they finally take him to the doctor after he hasn't eaten for 5 days and he says that he should eat because there are people starving all over the world You gotta eat, Danny Why? Well, um... There's people starving all over the world Don't you think you should lead with, "Because, Danny, you need energy to fuel your body so you don't waste away and die." Not, "Because, Danny, a poor African child could have eaten that delicious pizza that went to waste! You should feel guilty about that, Danny!" You say he hasn't eaten in five days? Absolutely nothing. As you can see, the dialogue really is the ultimate weakest link here. The genuinely interesting premise becomes instantly laughable when the very words the characters are saying are making you roll your eyes The doctor asks why they waited so many days to bring him into the hospital and their only response is... I don't know. Wow, what great parenting. The mum overhears the kids whispering to each other, which leads to the little girl now refusing to eat as well. She says she's not hungry Why? I don't know. I wish I did. Are you taking any of this seriously? Of course I am! "I'm their mother." And the award for the most ham-fisted dialogue that no one in reality would ever say goes to... The dad gets really fed up and the kid whispers the secret truth about "the box" to him. Please tell me... The first actual interesting event happens when you think they end up serving the mother for dinner, but no, It's just a dream. I've spoken before about how I'm really sick of this trope and it's no different here. Except, instead of having the inevitable scene where she wakes up from a nightmare, it just cuts to being Christmas and her leg looks fine. So, I... I guess it didn't happen and it's just jarring and confusing. Why did they edit it that way? Did they just not record her waking up? Sad part is this would have been a better ending than what we get in a second. Somehow the kids are still alive, but they're really skinny I guess that's shocking and... scary? The kid hands his mum a present that reminds her of that stranger on the train that one time and she asks if... Was he playing some kind of a joke? Is this some kind of a joke? Yes. Conveniently, the entire family end up in hospital the exact same time, even though their conditions all started at different times. But let's not get hung up on that. They all die and the mother is left desperately trying to find creepy lazy eye Robin Williams. but before anything else happens, it cuts to black and it's over. That's the end...of that one. Yeah, I know... You have to ask yourself what the point of that was. I believe that they made this with the intent of it being scary. But "The Box" isn't scary. My elbow is scarier than "The Box". The only remotely frightening thing was when the family were eating the mother, and that didn't even happen, so not a single element of this short film succeeds in either horror, acting, message or moral, presentation, pacing, storytelling, or just about every element that makes up a short story or makes it effective. Why on Earth would I ever recommend it? The answer is I don't because it's lame Just completely lame. But nothing in the whole entire world is quite as lame as the next short film in this anthology. Ugh, "The Birthday Party". "The Birthday Party" might be the worst thing I've ever seen... in my whole life... ever. It's definitely the worst horror anything I've ever seen, and I've seen "Leprechaun In The Hood". So you *know* it's bad. The stupidity is so baffling that I don't think you're actually going to believe me when I try to explain what happens in this one. And it took two people to write this! Haha, wow! If you're all interested in movies you've probably seen that video by "Now You See It" called "Opening Shots Tell Us Everything". With that in mind, explain to me what the opening shot of "The Birthday Party" means. She's sleeping in the middle of the day for some reason? The blue nightgown foreshadows the dark story that's about to happen? Maybe the camera man just liked the look of her butt. That was so unbelievably unnecessary that it does nothing but highlight exactly why so much of modern horror completely relies on predictable boring jump scares that that make no sense, because take that out on what would be scary? Nothing! There's nothing scary about this! Wow, this well lit shot in a fucking kitchen! Wow, so scary! You don't have to do anything. You just edit in a loud noise and boom everyone is losing their minds. Don't even know who anyone is because nothing makes any sense, but the main character goes to see who I think is her partner But he's died from something. David! That's unfortunate. He has a glass in his hand so I guess he drank too much and died. Her daughter who is black (and no, it's never explained) shows up and she understandably tries to hide the corpse as to not traumatize her. It's my birthday!
I know! Then for some reason the little girl pisses herself. Not because she saw her dad die or anything, but I guess because kids piss themselves sometimes, I dunno. They leave the room and the woman continues as if nothing has happened. Why don't you call an ambulance? Why are you not doing anything? There is literally a dead body in the other room. Why are you acting like this? What the fuck even happened there? How was that a scare? That wasn't even a fake-out scare! It just has no logic in terms of anything that makes sense! She starts crying and I just want to know why she hasn't called an ambulance yet. What is she fucking doing? I can't feel sympathy for you if you're just a massive idiot. She goes back to the corpse and finds that he took some pills to kill himself... okay. That still doesn't change anything. Why has she still not phoned an ambulance?! She sees someone coming. Oh, no, what what would the logical thing be to do in this scene? Oh, I know let's pick up the body and hide with it in the closet. That won't be suspicious at all. Why... why would you do that? For what purpose would somebody do that? Why is she making this very simple situation so... needlessly complicated? This is so contrived and utterly moronic. I simply cannot conjure the words necessary to explain what is wrong with this. This is the worst thing I've ever seen. I fucking hate this so much. You don't even understand. Why does it constantly shove in noises that are mixed so loud, that you have no choice but to jump? You just can't do this... This is against the rules! Even the worst bottom of the barrel horror movies don't try to pull this kind of shit. They at least have a cat there or something to jump at. The woman continues to drag the body around. This entire premise works better as a comedy than it does as a short horror film. At least then you have the excuse that nothing needs to make sense as long as it's consistently funny. In fact if you took out that overbearing horror score and replaced it with some goofy comedic track, it would actually work a lot better. Just a side note - in that really awkward interview I mentioned earlier, the director of this segment says that she doesn't really like horror movies, so she just made it a comedy. [Annie Clark]
I think it is... teeters the line of, actually, in fact, a black comedy because for a movie scare me too much to watch. [IHE]
It's so confusing... it just makes no sense at all. Why is it in this horror anthology then? Why'd you go from having one horror one then a comedy horror one that isn't funny and isn't horrific, to then having two more horror ones. It's just it's just horribly confusing the tonal shift just makes no sense. The party entertainment shows up and the woman offers the guy some money for the suit and then starts to put the dead body in it. Because that's really funny and scary or whatever you're going for.. I really don't know you're going for with this. I'm sorry. Again, this is more of an unintentional comedy than it is a horror movie. Cut to the birthday party scene and for some reason the woman thought it would be just a brilliant idea to put the dead body in the bear costume in front of everyone at the other end of the dinner table. This isn't scary. It's just frustratingly stupid. Someone knocks into the corpse, so it falls over into the cake. Then they slide the head off, everyone starts screaming, and it ends. First off, why would they all automatically assume that he's dead and not, say.... passed out from drinking or overheating and that hot outfit? I have no idea... Maybe the setup could work if he looked like a disgusting rotting corpse, but that would be way too much effort for this drivel. And that's really where the problem lies, there would be a way to make this premise entertaining. The same can be said about any of the stories in this anthology. But unfortunately, the execution is so so sloppy and clearly rushed that every little detail makes no sense whatsoever. This section is by far the worst one of the four... like I'd be surprised if you sat looking at this video right now wasn't equally as baffled as me. Just like... What are you talking about? There has to be more. You have to explain. What was happening there? I'm sorry. I can't. It just makes no sense. I'm so fascinated by how awful it is that I actually think you should go out of your way to load this up on Netflix, (If it's on there depending on your country) just so you can watch this segment in particular for yourself, to really understand how muddled and confusing it is. It is completely baffling. I really feel like I'm missing a crucial piece of the puzzle here, but the more you try to analyze it, the more confusing it becomes. I really do hope to God this was just made in an afternoon and all improvised on set because this is truly God-awful. And then after the end title card, they make a little joke about the alternate title being, "The Memory Lucy Suppress from Her Seventh Birthday". Teehee. And that it "Wasn't Really Her Mum's Fault" Teehee. Which is complete bullshit because what I just saw were the actions of an insane person, Who chose to put a corpse in a panda costume in front of an army of children. It was entirely her fault. Every single thing that happened was 100% a result of her piss-poor awful decision-making, AKA it was her fault! It is not a comedy anthology. You can do dark comedy. You can do horror with funny elements in it, but this this fails not only at being a horror, but also being comedy. Whatever. Either way it failed in every aspect possible and I simply can't talk about it for any longer without getting angry. For some reason, I didn't think to look, until way afterwards, at who directed each segment. But it turns out the singer, Saint Vincent, was in charge of this one. So, as a first time director, it probably explains why this is so utterly terrible. Might be a good idea to stick with the music, mate. "Don't Fall" "Don't Fall" is by far the best of the four, but that really is not saying much. It's the only one that delivers on the kind of experience you would hope to see on something like this. Some unlikable idiot young people go exploring in the desert somewhere and all end up being killed by a creature. Great, fantastic! That's all I want from the 20 minutes you have to develop anything. Apart from having a terrible name and also having one of the worst lines of dialogue I have ever heard... "This is so fucking epic."
"Right?" It stands out just because it's the only one of the four that has something I can point to and say, "Yeah, I'm glad my eyes looked at that that was vaguely enjoyable for a couple of seconds before I immediately forgot about it." I know this probably sounds like I'm grasping at straws, and it's a total backhanded compliment, ... and that's because I am totally grasping at straws, and it really is just a huge backhanded compliment... The plot is so simple I can probably describe it to you in a couple of seconds. Four 35-year-olds pretending to be twenty year olds find creepy cave drawings in the desert. One of them gets an infection from some unexplained demon thing (it really doesn't matter). She becomes a scary creature with some surprisingly decent practical effects (compared to what I was expecting). It kills everyone, except for the other girl who didn't listen to the title. But then the creature does just kill her... so that was that. I don't even have much else to say about this one because it very much just is what it says on the tin. If all four of the short films were as mindlessly enjoyable as this one, I certainly would not have been motivated enough to ever open my mouth long enough to talk about them. But here we are. We don't live in that universe. I wouldn't say this is anything particularly interesting, but I would be okay with seeing something like this fully developed into a 90-minute monster movie or something. Because apart from "The Hills Have Eyes", I can't really think of many horror movies that take place in a desert. Which, to me, could be quite creepy setting if done correctly. "Her Only Living Son"
Last and almost least is Her Only Living Son" Which surprise surprise is utterly boring nonsense. Continuing on with amateur nature of these films, the very opening shot has two pairs of eyes with very obvious ring lights being reflected back in them... like, come on. And this general level of technical incompetence continues throughout, including the clumsy script and wooden acting. There are a lot of boring awkward scenes of people either sitting or standing around talking to each other. By the end, you're just kind of wondering, "What on earth was the point of any of that?" I'm not even going to bother talking about the plot at all because it's simply kind of a retelling of "Rosemary's Baby". But this is a universe where Rosemary's baby grew up to be an angsty teenager. You know what I want for my birthday mom? Privacy.
I want some fucking privacy! Wow, what a great... fantastic idea But this is without any depth, character building, creepiness, mystery, or suspense. Why you would even bother to attempt to retell a story, which has been done so much better than you ever could in a 20 minute segment, at the end of a cheap horror anthology? I'll never know... but out of the four, it was the most forgettable. Partially because hardly anything of interest happens. But also partially because by this point you're so exhausted from a constant barrage of garbage, you just kind of want it to end. "Conclusion"
Ultimately, XX is a failure beyond anything I could have ever anticipated. If this movie was designed to highlight the talent of female directors out there, I'm afraid it... it didn't really work. You know that people of any gender are capable of making both great *and* awful films right? Luckily the whole feminist slam wasn't really that intrusive, and it didn't really annoy me at all. I'd barely noticed it. But when you have one of the short films being abysmal beyond words, two being pointless and awful, and only one being slightly passable, there really is nothing of quality to recommend here. And the things you can point out is being quality you could very easily find in spades and countless other examples in this same genre. All I wanted when I went on this fucking bullshit on Netflix at 1:00 a.m. was to see something a little bit creepy or horrific as the premise promises, but the only thing that ended up being horrific was the incompetency of the direction, theming storytelling, and just about everything else that makes up a compelling piece of visual God damn media. If you want to have a good hearty laugh, make sure you go and read the Metacritic reviews for XX. It has some of the most ridiculous hyperbolic critic bullshit I've ever seen in my entire life, and that's saying something. I really do not give a fuck who made the movie. I only give a fuck if it's good or not. Make sure you use the link in the description to see where this film fits in my "Search for the Worst" ranking list. And why not check out the "Search for the Worst" playlist, which at this point is full of endless videos about movies of all different qualities, both better and worse, than XX. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye!
