Review of XX (2017) by Michael R — 21 Feb 2017

Anthology films are inherently messy, and for that reason I find them unusually difficult to review as a whole. While some have segments that are loosely tied together (e.g. V/H/S) and some are have stories that are, for all intents and purposes, narratively unrelated (e.

G. Wild Tales), XX generally falls towards the latter. Most anthologies live or die on their gimmick, and XX's--being all written and directed by women--is definitely a more interesting one. As expected, some segments work and some don't, and the final product is inconsistent.

We have one that's effectively understated, one that's darkly hilarious, one that's so short that it borders on pointless, and one that's a theme stew, respectively. The overall product, unfortunately, isn't good enough to be called good, and despite the entertainment at hand, it's pretty disappointing as a whole.

Each segment is very, very loosely connected by wonderfully grim and tactile stop-motion animations by Sofìa Carrillo. The first story is "The Box" by Jovanka Vuckovic, wherein a mother encounters a man on the subway during Christmastime who offers to show her son the present that he's holding.

He soon stops eating, and the short follows the family over a week as their family dynamics change. It's well paced and one of the more consistent of the batch, telling the story in a way that gradually raises the tension while maintains a generally somber tone.

Its ambiguity may turn some people off, but it worked for me. Next we have "The Birthday Party" by Annie Clark, better known by her musician moniker St. Vincent. I'm largely unfamiliar with her music, but this was easily my favorite.

Unlike the rest, it's a straight-up dark comedy and doesn't try to be a horror film. It's about a woman who, on the morning of her daughter's birthday party, finds her husband dead and has to hide the body from her artsy housekeeper and an increasing amount of children.

It's timed well and the off-kilter, silly sense of humor works throughout, mixing pratfall humor with a sense of gleeful sarcasm. I, along with the whole audience, was laughing out loud. The back half of XX is where it gets messy.

We then have "Don't Fall" by Roxanne Benjamin, in which two women go camping with their pretentious mansplaning guy friends. It turns out that the guys decided to have them camp on an Indian burial ground, and some sort of demon starts mangling them one by one.

Its special effects are impressive especially considering what much have been a minuscule budget and it has the most gore out of all four segments, but that's all that there is. It's the shortest one by far and the setup is clichéd.

It had a sense of humor, but not a sense of self-awareness. It's so undeveloped that it's essentially pointless, and it made me wish that it had been cut out to let the other three stories be longer and more fleshed out.

The final short is "Her Only Living Son" by Karyn Kusama, easily the most established of the group of filmmakers. I still find Jennifer's Body to be incredibly underrated and last year's The Invitation was a great surprise, so I was sadden to find that hers was probably the second-worst.

As a spiritual successor to Rosemary's Baby of sorts, a mother grapples with the malevolent behavior of her son, who is about to turn 18 and isn't punished by those around him. It has the loftiest of goals, but it doesn't stick the landing.

The intentions are visible but muddled; it's clearly an exploration of a lonely mother's anxiety's, but is it also supposed to be about privilege? It seems to have intentions to look at how society may not punish those who are clearly harmful because of their potential, gender, and/or race, but this isn't explored much.

There isn't enough time to set up the mythos and despite some nice directorial flourishes, the end result is lacking. Overall, XX is more of the type of film that one could check out out of curiosity more than anything else.

The first half is notably better than the second, and while I could see myself thinking about "The Box" and revisiting "The Birthday Party" in the future, I don't seed myself looking back at "Don't Fall", and "Her Only Living Son" is wasted potential from an underrated filmmaker.

The variety of voices on display here is nice to have, but as I feared, they don't come together too well. 5.8/10, meh, C+, below average, etc.