You don’t often see an anthology horror movie featuring an all-female lead along with female filmmakers who stunningly direct it. Oh, that’s right, XX is a film based on four short stories that evolves around four disturbing stories that happens over the course of the movie. But what’s more important about it is all of them are short enough, sweet and concise which makes it an absolute joy to watch.
Four women that are not related to each other have to go through their own nightmare: one has to watch the family that loses weight (“The Box” segment) ; another one prepares to make the best birthday party possible (“The Birthday Party” segment), of course, with an unpredictable outcome; a mother who tenderly loves her only son watching him celebrating his 18th that can be his last one; and the last, most interesting one(“Fall” segment), is when three friends decide to spend fun time near the mountains, in the meantime have to make sure they don’t fall off the rocks or protect themselves from something worse than that…
The first segment presented is “The Box”. Susan and her son Daniel are riding in a subway. A little boy sees a man that carries a box. To satisfy his curiosity, Daniel asks the stranger what’s in it? The answer he got was not good enough so he insisted. But when the boy finally gets what he wanted, everything changes in his family from that moment onwards. As he starts losing weight, soon an unknown hectic disease will spread quickly, leaving a wondering mother puzzled and shocked…
In “The Birthday Party” segment things happen with Mary (Melanie Lynskey) whose preparation for a birthday party is almost complete. Everything is ready except one thing, her husband Steven all of a sudden dies right in his room. Not sure what to do, instead of calling police and ambulance, the woman comes up with a drastic idea that will leave everyone stunned at the party. Two other segments, “The Fall” and “Her Only Living Son” are quite interesting as well. Each of them has a dynamic and horrifying stories to tell that will turn everyone’s evening into full of fun… that will, obviously happen only, I repeat, only if you love horror movies…
In conclusion, XX is awfully engaging horror movie with some juicy scenes any horror movie lover will appreciate. If you have no issues to fall asleep after seeing movies like XX, then you should certainly consider seeing after midnight to fulfill the movie’s main duty. Other than that, it’s a pleasantly surprising movie that is worthwhile. It does not overload the audience, the storyline ends before you even realize it. It’s swift and right to the point, which is what we need sometimes when we want to watch a simple good movie with no-strings attached.