X Trilogy: Collector's Edition (4K UHD Review)
Director
Ti WestRelease Date(s)
2022/2024 (October 21, 2025)Studio(s)
Little Lamb/Mad Solar Productions/Motel Mojave (A24)- Film/Program Grade: See Below
- Video Grade: See Below
- Audio Grade: See Below
- Extras Grade: B-
- Overall Grade: A-
Review
When writer/director Ti West and Mia Goth traveled to New Zealand in order to shoot X, they never intended it to form the foundation for a trilogy. The misadventures of the ambitious Maxine Minx (Goth) were supposed to be a self-contained story, with Maxine barely escaping the gruesome fate faced by her fellow adult filmmakers while on a farm in rural Texas. Yet Maxine’s elderly nemesis Pearl (also Goth) proved to be a compelling (if somewhat cryptic) character, so West and Goth decided to explore her backstory with the prequel Pearl. That film helped to establish parallels between Maxine and Pearl that went far beyond just having the same actor playing each part. They both shared dreams of stardom as well as a willingness to do anything in order to overcome any obstacles that were in their way. What they didn’t necessarily share was success in achieving their dreams, so after the yin and the yang of these dual personalities clashed in X, it was perhaps inevitable that West and Goth would collaborate on a second follow-up, MaXXXine, that explored the impacts of this conflict—and the rest, as they say, became history.
Or not quite, at least as far as home video history is concerned. While Lionsgate released MaXXXine in North America on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray, they had released both X and Pearl on Blu-ray only. To get either of them in 4K, you had to import the German UHDs from Capelight Pictures and Turbine Medien, respectively. A24 has finally corrected that situation with a boxed set that collects all three films in 4K, with new extras and their usual distinctive packaging. Finally, the misadventures of Maxine Minx can be seen at their best, without having to import anything (or deal with German-language menus, either).
X opens the saga with a shot that’s essentially the reverse of John Ford’s famous closing shot from The Searchers. The camera is inside of a building looking out through an opening that narrows down the full width of the frame, but rather than having someone shut a door to cut off the outside world, the camera pushes through the opening instead, which causes the frame to expand back to its full width. It’s a deceptively simple shot, but it prepares the audience for West’s visual games of shifting aspect ratios throughout the rest of the film. It also sets up the idea of a film within a film, or perhaps to be more precise, a story within a story—in other words, the opening scene is a framing device that demonstrates the literal framing devices that West will use elsewhere. Of course, it still doesn’t necessarily ready the audience for some of the disquieting things that are going to happen within those shifting frames, but that’s the essence of West’s measured approach to the horror genre.
Ti West is unquestionably one of the modern masters of slow-burn horror, where the basic situation is set up gradually, carefully ratcheting up the tension until all hell breaks loose by the end. Yet one of his greatest gifts is something for which he doesn’t get enough credit: his technical prowess in bringing period stories to life on screen in an authentic fashion. West doesn’t merely make period pieces; he recreates period filmmaking that’s accurate down to the smallest detail. In a movie like House of the Devil, he didn’t just settle for setting the story during the Eighties. Instead, he made the entire film feel like it had actually been produced during the Eighties—right down to the freeze frame for the opening credits and the font that he used for the titles. More subtly, he worked with cinematographer Eliot Rockett to create a slightly desaturated color grade that replicated the look of the telecine process used for VHS tapes during that era. Even if those details aren’t absorbed on a conscious level, they still work subconsciously to give not just a period look, but also a period feel.
Since X is set during the Seventies, West and Rockett employed a very different visual strategy to create the feeling of a film produced during that decade. The story follows a group of filmmakers (Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Kid Cudi, Martin Henderson, and Owen Campbell) as they travel to a remote farm in Texas to shoot an adult movie called The Farmer’s Daughters. The elderly owners of the farm, Howard and Pearl, don’t actually know what kind of film that the young people are making. Needless to say, Howard and Pearl have some surprises in store for them once they find out, but the elderly couple might have a few surprises of their own in store for the filmmakers as well. Since West’s story shifts between what happens around the production of The Farmer’s Daughters and the porno flick itself, West and Rockett chose to shift back and forth between the look of matted widescreen 35mm film and that of open-matte 16mm film. It’s an effective approach to evoke a time and a place, in this case the rural Texas of 1979.
Needless to say, Tobe Hooper is a touchstone for West’s tale, though not always in obvious ways. Sending a group of young people in a van to meet their respective fates is an unmistakable nod to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the story’s real antecedent is actually Hooper’s follow-up Eaten Alive (though precisely why is best left for viewers to discover on their own). There’s also a strong Paul Thomas Anderson vibe to the way that the director of The Farmer’s Daughters has the ambition to create a real film, not just a porno flick. The disagreements between him and the producer that’s putting up the money comes straight out of Boogie Nights (as does the idea of shifting between 16mm and 35mm). Yet all of that is arguably a chimera, since at its heart X is neither a slasher movie nor an expose of the adult film industry. It’s all just a veneer that helps to create both a setting and a mood. No, the real core of X is a very different genre: body horror, though not in the familiar Cronenbergian fashion. Instead, it’s the horror inherent to the aging process. It’s no accident that the filmmakers in X are making an adult movie, since that provides a visual representation for the heights of youthful sexual potency. Howard and Pearl’s aging bodies stand in sharp contrast to that, and the young people are a painful reminder to the elderly couple of the inevitability of decay—and the fact that what’s gone can never be recaptured. The real villain in X is time itself.
That’s why West’s own games with time are entirely appropriate, since he uses his technical expertise to try to recapture lost eras on film. The Seventies setting of X may be the past for us, but it’s the present for the main characters. Yet they have pasts of their own, so West took things to the next level for Pearl by changing the setting and the style to match an even earlier era. He did something similar with MaXXXine, which moved things forward a decade after the events of X. It’s an ambitious trilogy from a resourceful filmmaker, one who’s an expert at providing the visual embodiment of Delmore Schwartz’s view of time:
“What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.”
Eliot Rockett captured X digitally using Sony CineAlta Venice cameras with Vantage MiniHawks lenses for the 35mm footage and a vintage 1970s-era Kowa zoom lens for the 16mm footage. (The distinctive ultra-wide-angle shots were captured using an ARRI Ultra Prime 8r 8mm lens.) There’s no information available regarding the either the capture resolutions or the resolution at which post-production work was completed, but it was likely a 2K Digital Intermediate that has been upscaled to 4K here and then graded for High Dynamic Range in Dolby Vision and HDR10. (Note that the German release from Capelight Pictures also included HDR10+.) The majority of the film is framed at approximately 1.90:1, with the 16mm segments windowboxed within that frame at 1.37:1.
At first glance, it’s an unimpressive 4K presentation since the image is consistently soft, but there’s much more going on here than meets the eye. As Rockett explained to Filmmaker magazine, “When I shot (The House of the Devil) for Ti, the intention was to make this period movie where not only was the story set in a different period but the actual artifact of the movie itself felt of that period. That was again the approach that we were taking this time. The entire movie should feel like it was found in a time capsule.” Reading between the lines, their real intention wasn’t necessarily to re-create the look of both 35mm and 16mm negatives, both of which can be extremely sharp and detailed, but rather to give the impression of watching 35mm and 16mm prints. That’s an important distinction, as it explains why things look the way that they do here. To create that effect, Rockett and West developed two different sets of LUTs (Look Up Tables) to apply to the footage that they shot, with different color renditions and grain structures to mimic the respective formats. Crucially, a slight de-focus was added to each in order to simulate the softness that results from the generational loss due to the printing process. A print is never as sharp as the original camera negative, so the image in this 4K presentation isn’t as sharp as the best that the format has to offer. That’s a conscious choice, not a defect.
The results do indeed resemble watching 35mm and 16mm prints in projection, especially when viewed on a large screen via digital projection. No, it’s not as sharp or as detailed as digitally captured cinematography is capable of producing, nor does it match a scan from a quality film negative, either. On the other hand, it does a credible job of giving the impression of real film prints. The simulated grain varies in intensity depending on the source, but it always retains that slightly softened print-like appearance. The color timing also changes depending on the source, with the 16mm footage having the distinctive yellowish cast of a worn and faded theatrical print. The rest of the colors look far more natural, though they’re still relatively muted for an HDR grade. There’s plenty of color detail, without ever pushing the saturation level too far. The contrast range is similarly restrained, with decent if unexceptional black levels (though once again, that’s how everything was shot). It’s not a dazzling 4K presentation, but it’s an accurate one, and that’s what counts.
Audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos and English 2.0 Descriptive Audio, with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. The Atmos mix offers a subtle but consistent sense of envelopment that’s a noticeable improvement over the already fine 5.1 track on the previous Blu-ray versions. Offscreen effects are placed precisely around the viewer, both environmental and otherwise—during one of the film’s more gruesome scenes, blood splatters around the room in all possible directions, including the ceiling. There’s even a couple of moments where voices from upstairs rooms can be heard in the overheads. The score from Tyler Bates and Chelsea Wolfe supports the action perfectly, and there’s also some appropriate period songs from the likes of Mungo Jerry, Robert Palmer, and Blue Oyster Cult.
X (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO) B+/A-/A
Ti West opens Pearl in the exact same way that he opened X, though with one key difference. In both cases, it’s an inversion of the final shot in The Searchers, opening up the outside world instead of closing it off. With X, the shot helped to establish the shifting aspect ratios that West would use throughout the film, and it also gave a visual indication that the story was going to be structured as a film within a film. The opening shot of the barn in Pearl also foreshadows the visual strategy that follows, but it’s a strikingly different one. That’s because Pearl is actually a prequel to X, taking place more than five decades earlier during the waning days of World War I.
The young adult filmmakers in X got more than they bargained for inside of this same barn, because the elderly owners Howard and Pearl had no idea what kind of film that they intended to make, and weren’t particularly thrilled to find out about it. Clearly, Howard and Pearl had their own storied history, and Pearl sets out to explore just what led them to that place in their lives. While the setting is the same, the time period is quite different, so when the camera pushes out the barn door this time, the dingy Seventies-era cinematography has been replaced by vivid Technicolor Cinemascope instead. Yet like many of the classic Hollywood melodramas of yore, this lush surface is little more than a gloss that hides the darkness that lies within. It’s yet another framing device.
Of course, Technicolor and ‘Scope are hardly period-accurate for 1918. The reality is that West originally wanted to shoot Pearl in full frame black-and-white, but A24 put the kibosh on that idea. West decided to go drastically in the opposite direction, and while the look that he chose may not match the period, it’s a perfect externalization of the interior mindset of the central character. Pearl (Goth) has been living inside a Technicolor dream world in order to escape her oppressive existence. Howard (Alistair Sewell) is off fighting the war, and she’s living a life of drudgery with her domineering mother (Tandi Wright) and her disabled father (Matthew Sunderland). Pearl dreams of escaping by becoming a dancer, and the brightness of her fantasies helps to mask the darkness of her reality. It also helps to mask the darkness in the core of her being, because to put it mildly, Pearl might be wound a wee bit too tight. She’s a little ahead of her time in the way that she works out her personal issues, so it’s entirely appropriate that her Technicolor dreams are ahead of their time as well. After all, Pearl is a renaissance woman, for good or for ill.
While Goth had played the role of aspiring adult actress Maxine in X, clearly Pearl is the character who was near and dear to her heart. Pearl was actually developed as something of a lark during the production of X, with Goth and West collaborating together on the screenplay. It was a way of providing a backstory for Pearl, but as sometimes happens, subtext became text when A24 greenlit the prequel before X was even completed. After a brief one-month break, everyone returned to the set in New Zealand to start filming Pearl. That included West’s longstanding cinematographer Eliot Rockett, who was quite comfortable radically shifting photographic styles on such short notice since the two of them have a long history of adjusting their style in order to match any given time period. There’s some chicanery in this case since the style isn’t really accurate for 1918, but it’s still thematically appropriate despite being technically anachronistic.
Still, whatever that West and his other collaborators may have brought to the project, Pearl is really Mia Goth’s film from the first frame to the last. Quite literally so in the closing shot, where West refused to call “cut” while he held the camera on Pearl’s face, forcing Goth to maintain Pearl’s strained smile far past the comfort zone for both her and for the audience as well. Goth had to improvise Pearl’s slow breakdown in one continuous shot, and she did that so fearlessly that it’s already become the stuff of legend. While Pearl wouldn’t have worked without Ti West’s unique voice behind the camera, it really wouldn’t have worked without Goth to bring the main character to life. It’s a tour-de-force performance in support of some virtuoso filmmaking.
Elliot Rockett captured Pearl digitally using the same basic setup that he did for the pseudo-35mm footage in X: Sony CineAlta Venice cameras with Vantage MiniHawks lenses, in this case framed in widescreen at 2.39:1. Aside from the aspect ratio, the biggest difference between X and Pearl is due to the LUTs that were applied to the image, with Pearl was going for the vivid look of older Technicolor prints. Rockett actually started out with a LUT in the more limited Rec. 709 color space and pushed it a bit from there, with Park Road in New Zealand pushing things even further during post-production. It’s not clear whether or not that work was completed as a 2K or a 4K Digital Intermediate, but it probably wouldn’t have made a significant difference either way. That’s because West and Rockett were going for the look of dye-transfer Technicolor prints that were struck from fine-grained negatives. The LUT applied a fine layer of artificial grain, but then softened it with a defocusing effect in order to imitate the look of the generational loss from the printing process. As a result, Pearl doesn’t really offer 4K worth of fine detail regardless of the capture and post-production resolutions that were involved. The image is still sharp and clear, with well-defined textures, but it doesn’t demonstrate the kind of pinpoint fine detail that the best of 4K can provide.
Where this 4K does shine is via the High Dynamic Range grading (both Dolby Vision and base HDR10 are included). While Rockett didn’t necessarily explore the full color gamut of Rec.2020, the colors are still extremely bold and vivid in this HDR rendition. The faux-Technicolor look announces itself from the opening shot pushing out of the barn door toward the rest of the farm, with the verdant grass, deep reds, brilliant blues, and orange-tinted clouds all standing in sharp relief to each other. It’s a deliberately artificial Gone with the Wind style color scheme, and it’s simply gorgeous. Shortly after that, during Pearl’s first dream dance sequence, the advantages of HDR are demonstrated further since she’s lit by a single hard spotlight overhead. The blacks around her are deep and true, while the glowing highlights on her skin are intense but never blown out. The same thing is true of all the shots from within darkened barn looking out of the brightly lit exteriors. The interior shadow detail is dimmed but still perfectly resolved, while the exterior highlights are never blown out no matter how bright that they appear. With Pearl, it’s not necessarily the contrast from shot to shot that matters as much as it’s the contrast in tones that lie within different sections of the same shots. It’s amazing how this HDR grade is able to balance the lighter and darker elements in each individual frame without losing anything at either end of the spectrum. This is reference-quality video, at least in terms of how it accurately represents the intentions of the filmmakers.
Audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos and English 2.0 Descriptive Audio, with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. This Atmos mix is also a significant improvement over the 5.1 versions that are available on the previous Blu-rays. There’s subtle envelopment from beginning to end, with key sound effects being energized all throughout the sound field—birds, insects, and other environmental sounds appear from any and all channels including the overheads. The same thing is true of the wildly immersive thunderstorm that takes place partway through the film, with the sounds of thunder assaulting the viewer from all directions. There’s a bit of deep bass in some of those thunderclaps, as well as in Pearl’s later fantasy during her audition where explosions and fireworks provide some rumble. Other than that, though, the deep bass is naturally somewhat limited for most of the film. What isn’t limited is the lush yet ominous score from Tyler Bates and Tim Williams, which sounds simply wonderful here. (Pro tip: buy the soundtrack album. You’ll thank me later.)
PEARL (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO) B+/A/A
X was set during the Seventies, while Pearl stepped back several decades to the waning days of World War I. MaXXXine moves the saga forward a decade to 1985. At that time, America was in the grip of moral panic over content in movies and music, and California was in the grip of fear due to the rampage of serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker. Yet Maxine Mink has been trying to ignore all of that in her quest for stardom. She’s now a successful adult film star living in Hollywood who dreams of making her break into mainstream filmmaking. She auditions for a lead role in the horror sequel The Puritan II, and when director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) casts her in the part, Maxine is convinced that she’s on her way to a better future. Yet the past comes back to haunt her as some of her friends end up victims of a serial killer who may or may not be the Night Stalker, and that puts her in the sights of a police investigation led by Det. Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Det. Torres (Bobby Cannavale). Worse, it puts her in the path of the sleazy private investigator John Labat (Kevin Bacon), who seems to know more about her past than anyone else. Maxine enlists the aid of friends like her agent Teddy Knight, Esq. (Giancarlo Esposito), but ultimately, she’s going to have to deal with the person who’s been pulling all the strings in her own inimitable fashion. MaXXXine also stars Moses Sumney, Halsey, Lily Collins, and Simon Prast.
Ti West’s games with time come full circle in MaXXXine, which is entirely appropriate since it brings Maxine’s story full circle. Time may be linear, but it’s also circular. Cycles can repeat, especially where abusive behavior is concerned, and they continue to repeat until someone finally breaks the chain. Like Pearl before her, Maxine had a strict religious upbringing and her dreams of stardom were actually a hope of escaping the rigid strictures that her family life had placed around her. Ironically enough, it was Pearl who ended up removing any of Maxine’s remaining inhibitions about achieving those dreams by any means necessary. Despite the apparent Night Stalker murders and the past coming back to haunt her, Maxine is truly fearless and won’t back down from anything or anyone—the ways in which she deals with a Hollywood creep and the private investigator are truly unforgettable. Even her agent ends up breaking bad when coming to her aid (after all, what are agents for?) Yet in the circularity of time in this trilogy, the faster that Maxine runs away from her past, the closer that she gets to it, and she won’t be able to achieve her dreams until she finally deals with the person who actually started her down this path—and no, that wasn’t Pearl.
Despite the fact that West never intended X to serve as the first film in a trilogy, that film still laid the foundations for everything that happens in MaXXXine. Clearly, West did his homework with his own films before sitting down to write this one. The wizard behind Maxine’s curtain was already established in X, albeit in the background, and many subtle details in that film are paid off beautifully in MaXXXine. It’s all part of the circularity of time in Maxine’s life. After all, it was her father who taught her that she shouldn’t accept a life that she doesn’t deserve. At the beginning of X, Maxine sits down in front of a mirror and tells herself “you’re a fucking sex symbol.” By the end of the film, she’s screaming at Pearl that “I’m a fucking star.” At the end of MaXXXine, she’s seated in front of a mirror again, telling herself “you’re a fucking movie star” (in a pretty open homage to Boogie Nights). And in all cases, she credits divine intervention for her success. Yet the irony is that it’s her rejection of the divine influence that has resulted in her moving forward—she’s intervened on her own behalf against divine intervention. Maxine has chosen to write her own life story, by any means necessary.
The visual dynamic that West and his cinematographer Eliot Rockett have crafted for the trilogy varies from film to film based on each individual setting, with MaXXXine alternating between giallo-inspired widescreen and full-frame video. He also chose to bring all three films full circle by opening them with shots filmed from within a building while a door opens horizontally to the outside world. It’s served as a way to prime viewers for the shifting aspect ratios while also indicating that the stories are going to be structured as movies within movies. Yet with MaXXXine, the shot of the studio door opening is actually preceded by a brief prologue tying everything back to X (and indirectly to Pearl as well), followed by a quote from Bette Davis:
“In this business, until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star.”
By the end of the film, Maxine Mink’s story has come full circle as her personal triumph is accompanied by Kim Carnes singing Bette Davis Eyes. While West deliberately left the actual ending somewhat ambiguous, his use of that song makes it clear that since we’ve seen Maxine embrace her inner monster, she’s finally achieved the stardom that she always dreamed about. While Pearl’s fantasies were never enough to let her fully escape the oppressive world around her, fantasy and reality have become one for Maxine. In one form or another, she’s a fucking star.
Elliot Rocket captured the bulk of MaXXXine digitally at 5.4K resolution using Sony CineAlta Venice 2 cameras with Hawk MiniHawk Hybrid anamorphic lenses. (The video sequences were captured at 720p using an off-the-shelf security camera with Century Compact lenses, which is hidden inside of the prop camera that’s visible in some of the shots.) While Rockett mostly stuck to period-accurate lighting on set, separate LUTs were used to help mimic the look of film under different shooting conditions. Post-production work was completed with the assistance of Company 3, which helped with the LUTs for the main shoot and also added extra effects like faux film grain and halation. Their final 4K Digital Intermediate for MaXXXine was framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release, with the 1.33:1 videotaped segments appearing windowboxed within that frame. High Dynamic Range for this version is offered in both Dolby Vision and HDR10.
Rockett and West had used Park Road in New Zealand to handle the post-production film effects for X and Pearl, and while they did fine work on both of those films, Company 3 took things to the next level. To cut to the chase, MaXXXine is one of the most realistically filmic-looking digital productions to date, outshining even the excellent work that Steve Yedlin has done on films like Knives Out. Paradoxically, that also means MaXXXine isn’t dazzling in 4K. Just like with X and Pearl, the idea wasn’t to recreate the look of a 35mm film negative, but rather a 35mm film print, and it’s amazingly convincing—especially when viewed in projection. De-focus affects were applied to reduce the level of fine detail to what was typically seen on dupe elements like prints. That said, there’s still a touch more detail visible here than on the Blu-ray version, especially in the closeups shot inside the studio, and the fake grain is managed much better with the extra breathing room available on UHD—there’s no extra noise or any banding effects. The contrast is slightly stronger as well, and the strobe lights in the club sequence are just a bit more intense with HDR. The only defects that are present here are intentional ones, like the deliberately unstable opening credits (Ti West really, really knows how to do period-accurate credit sequences!) MaXXXine isn’t necessarily demo material, but it’s not supposed to be. For those who know what to look for, it’s impressive enough.
Audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos and English 2.0 Descriptive Audio, with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. It’s a relatively restrained Atmos mix, and appropriately enough for a film set during the Eighties, it tends to be front-focused like most Dolby Stereo mixes were during that era. There are occasional effects steered to the ceiling speakers, like when helicopters are flying overhead, and all channels are fully energized during moments like the lively thunderstorm (although as with everything else in MaXXXine, even that storm isn’t quite what it seems). Most of the bass is provided by the Tyler Bates score and the various pieces of source music, although there are a few sound effects like the aforementioned thunder and the sounds of passing airplanes that offer a bit more rumble. (Plus, bonus points for the appropriate needle drop of my favorite Frankie Goes to Hollywood song.) It’s not the flashiest of Atmos mixes, but it suits the period material just as well as Eliot Rockett’s cinematography does.
MAXXXINE (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO) B/A/A-
The A24 4K Ultra HD release of the X Trilogy: Collector’s Edition is a three-disc set that includes each film and its associated extras on a separate UHD. It also includes a 64-page booklet with an essay by Jon Dieringer, concept art, and behind-the-scenes photographs, as well as a collection of poster and VHS artwork that was created as set dressing for MaXXXine. The discs are housed inside a heavy cardboard foldout Digibook featuring a photo collage from all three films, and everything comes packaged in one of A24’s nonstandard sized boxes, with a rigid slipcase and a protective plastic sleeve. The following extras are included, all of them in HD:
DISC ONE: X
- Commentary with Eliot Rockett and Tom Hammock
- Featurettes:
- Pearl Makeup Timelapse (1:33)
- The Farmer’s Daughters (4:56)
- The X Factor (11:37)
- Trailer (2:26)
DISC TWO: PEARL
- Commentary with Eliot Rockett and Tom Hammock
- Featurettes:
- Coming Out of Her Shell: The Creation of Pearl (11:37)
- Time After Time (4:00)
- Trailer (2:09)
DISC THREE: MAXXXINE
- Commentary with Jason Kisvarday and Kelsi Ephraim
- Featurettes:
- The Belly of the Beast (9:38)
- XXX Marks the Spot (11:19)
- Hollywood Is a Killer (8:13)
- Q&A with Ti West (25:34)
- Deep Dive with Composer Tyler Bates (8:26)
- Trailers:
- Trailer 1 (2:23)
- Trailer 2 (1:27)
These are all of the extras that were on the previous releases of the individual films in the trilogies (minus some unrelated trailers), with the addition of three new commentary tracks and one new interview. Eliot Rockett and production designer Tom Hammock are on hand to provide commentaries for X and Pearl, offering plenty of practical details about the designs of the films and the cinematography. They tell stories about the challenges of shooting in New Zealand (they had to disguise parts of the landscape that didn’t match rural Texas) and the different color palettes in each film. They also point out plenty of small Easter eggs for Pearl that were planted at the last minute in X after the sequel was greenlit toward the end of production.
MaXXXine is represented by production designer Jason Kisvarday and set decorator Kelsi Ephriam, who are naturally a bit more focused on the design aspects of the film. They discuss the complex nature of the world building in MaXXXine down to the smallest details like their choice of license plates for all the cars. They do address some of the practical challenges involved, like shutting down Hollywood Boulevard for three days and redressing it in order to shoot the street scenes. Narrow or not, there’s still some fascinating material here.
Aside from the trailers, the rest of the extras are mostly EPK-style featurettes that include cursory interviews with the cast and crew: The X Factor, Coming out of Her Shell, Time After Time, The Belly of the Beast, XXX Marks the Spot, and Hollywood is a Killer. In terms of sheer quantity, the three from MaXXXine offer the most, but they’re still pretty shallow. On the other hand, MaXXXine also offers the Q&A with Ti West, moderated by film journalist Jen Yamato, which took place after an Alamo Drafthouse screening of the film. He explains the process of making the three films in four years, from shooting X in New Zealand during the pandemic to writing the script for Pearl while in quarantine at the end of the shoot, and finally returning to Hollywood for MaXXXine. He also talks about his collaboration with Mia Goth and the challenges of making period pieces. MaXXXine also offers the only other new extra, a Deep Dive with Composer Tyler Bates, where he delves into the intentionally discordant nature of his scores for West.
The new commentaries and interview are a nice addition, but this is still a relatively slim collection of extras. But X, Pearl, and MaXXXine are all best appreciated for what they are, with some of their mysteries left unanswered (or at least left for viewers to decide for themselves). And to do that properly, you need to see them in best quality possible, so it’s great that A24 has finally made the 4K versions of all three films available domestically. No, they’re not reference quality in absolute terms, but they do deliver the best representations of what West and Rockett intended for each. It’s a masterclass in using digital technology to recreate the look from bygone eras of analogue filmmaking, and so A24’s 4K set is still highly recommended.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).