So this was inadvertently an A24 arthouse horror weekend.

First up on Friday was Midsommar, on a 4K disc — which I mention because this movie is absolutely stunning on disc. It’d actually be great demo content for a store, except uh, I don’t think you want to spring this on people who are just out looking for a new TV.

So as this movie starts out, it’s this extremely real-feeling portrait of this relationship between this kind of callow bro and this girl who is going through some super-heavy shit. Their relationship is clearly just not at a level where it’s capable of absorbing that heavy shit, but she desperately needs it to be and he doesn’t know how to be honest about that, and so yeah, it’s a bad situation all around.

But then they go to Sweden, and it gets worse. I’m not going to go all spoilery here, but like: They go to a small village’s midsummer festival, and given that you know it’s a horror movie, you’re probably going to feel the creeping sense of dread before it even gets explicitly creepy… but then it’s gonna get explicitly creepy, too.

I think the knock against this movie is maybe that it’s doing something too familiar with its folk-mythic horror. I can see that criticism, but it’s doing it very well — it’s a visually stunning movie with a soundtrack that is doing exactly what it needs to do, and the character notes manage to hit both over-the-top and subtle (helped by Florence Pugh playing the lead). It has that giallo-like feeling of individual scenes being so fascinating that you can almost overlook them not making any sense… except that here, they actually do make sense, even if they’re not fully explained.

And then today, we went to the theater and saw X, which — everyone notes like it’s a big deal — is directed by Ti West. This focus on him is very weird to me, because I have never heard of Ti West, and if you go look at his filmography on IMDB, I’ve never heard of any of the movies he wrote or directed, either. He seems to be a very deep cut kinda guy, like I suspect hardcore horror fans have seen his movies, but not somebody who’s broken into mainstream awareness. And yet, “Ti West’s X” basically every time it’s mentioned, to the point where I was wondering if that was actually the official title, like the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Apparently-famous-adjacent director aside, though, this is something of a weird movie. It’s got that A24 logo, so you’re expecting it to be all artsy, and it definitely is filmed in an artsy way. But the lampshade here is that the characters in the movie are producing a (very) low-budget porno movie, and the director/cameraman is all “it’s a dirty picture, but I’m going to make it good.”

And that’s what Ti West is doing: He’s making a good movie, this is elevated horror in a way… but it’s also, very straightforwardly, a movie about a bunch of horny young adults who engage in some sex and then later some slashering, with all the kills and scares and blood and genre furniture that horror fans love.

Ultimately I’d recommend Midsommar to a viewer who likes arthouse movies and is okay with horror, but X to a viewer who likes horror and is okay with arthouse movies.