‘XX’ (2017)

 

Run Time: 80 Minutes

I had my youngest daughter over, for a chunk of yesterday, and followed that up with a quick game of ‘Uno’ and ‘Monopoly Deal’ with said daughter and my ex-partner. Turns out that playing to win (instead of playing to lose really quickly so I can get back to my book) can be fun after all, who would have thought it…? :o)

What I didn’t do yesterday was pick up a book but I did manage to watch ‘XX’ when I got home. And… It was pretty good, all the more so as I’d managed to confuse it with ‘X’ (which I still need to watch) and my expectations were all over the place going into it.

Regular visitors here will know that I have a real soft spot for ‘horror anthology’ movies, almost as much as I do for zombie movies ;o) If there’s more than one separate story collected in a horror movie, I’m watching it. That’s what ultimately encouraged me to keep going with ‘X’ and it proved to be worth sticking with.

That’s not to say that there weren’t issues. There are four stories here and with an 80 minute run time, there wasn’t a lot of room for these tales to breathe; while this wasn’t an issue for a couple of them, the other two suffered slightly for it. Overall though, the standard of the four tales were consistently good throughout, I’ll get into that in a bit.

I wasn’t so keen on the framing narrative though. And I say ‘narrative’… There wasn’t really a narrative at all, or anything to tie it back into each tale; just some ‘stop motion’ animation that was unsettling enough but a little too vague to be really effective. It’s a good job then that the stories were very good and the first two, in particular, very well told. Let me tell you about them…

‘The Box’

If you’re making a horror anthology, the absolute best thing you can do is open it with an adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s ‘The Box’. Actually, not so much now as ‘XX’ got there first and Jovanka Vuckovic’s direction, with slight tweaks, makes for a taut tale, well told. I had a little bit to say about the short story, over Here, and don’t have a lot to add to that (to be honest). I’ll just say that ‘The Box’ was an inspired choice to open this movie.

‘The Birthday Party’

You don’t get the full title, it’s best encountered after you’ve watched the inevitable conclusion of perhaps the most traumatic birthday party ever (well, for Lucy and her Mum anyway). And while the ending is inevitable, that’s the whole point of it; watching Mary try her hardest to give Lucy a lovely birthday while we know that it’s all going to come crashing down. And ‘The Birthday Party’ definitely delivers on that promise.

‘Don’t Fall’

Four friends encounter evil, in the desert, and… die horribly. That’s it, that’s the tale. It’s not a bad tale in itself, plenty of terror happening here with an evil looking monster that just comes screaming out of the darkness. The short run-time really worked against ‘Don’t Fall’ though; it was really obvious that the pay-off was delivered at the expense of establishing the characters or giving a little context to the evil that overtakes them. It’s not a deal-breaker but it shows here.

‘Her Only Living Son’

Again, not a bad tale but it doesn’t end ‘XX’ with the same impact that ‘The Box’ opened the movie with. What really came across was the terror that Cora felt, realising that everything she had worked for, had been for nothing that whole time. What didn’t come across for me was the threat that Andy was supposed to represent.

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