XX is an all female horror anthology that was originally supposed to feature a few more notable names like Jennifer Lynch (Chained) and Mary Harron (American Psycho), but they dropped out for whatever reason. The project sounded promising and even the trailer made it look potentially good, but sadly that's far from the truth, as it turned out to be one of the weakest anthologies I've seen in years (though I don't watch many anthologies). Here's a rundown on all the segments featured in the movie:

THE BOX (by Jovanka Vuckovic)



The movie starts off with easily one of the worst entries in the bunch. Based on a short story by Jack Ketchum, the tale depicts a family that simply decides to stop eating. It starts with the youngest boy, who looks inside a mysterious box held by a stranger on a subway train. After looking into the box the boy decides that he's no longer hungry from that point on and after whispering something to his older sister she begins to feel the same. It eventually moves on to the father and you can guess how things turn out for them all. There's no twist, they simply stop eating and that's the story. The mother is left wondering WTF happened to her family, much like how I was feeling by the end of the segment.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY (by Annie Clark)



This marks musician-turned-director Annie Clark AKA St. Vincent's directorial debut, which stars Melanie Lynskey as a worn-out Mother that's in the process of putting her daughter's birthday party together. To make matters worse, she discovers her husband's dead body in his office and not wanting to spoil things, she naturally spends the rest of the day trying to conceal the corpse from the partygoers (I'm sure any parent would do the same for their children). Clearly meant to be some sort of dark comedy, this ended up being a completely illogical and unfunny entry that makes zero sense whatsoever. Weekend at Bernies did it better.

DON'T FALL (by Roxanne Benjamin)



I liked this tale the best out of the bunch, though that's honestly not saying much. The story depicts four friends on a desert expedition, where one of'em gets possessed by an ancient spirit and turns her into a clawed creature that decides to kill off the rest of the group. This is a simple creature feature and nothing more. It knew exactly what it was and how much time they had to convey the story and it got the job done with no time wasted. I enjoyed it for what it was, though it would've been nice had there been a bit more gore.

HER ONLY LIVING SON (by Karyn Kusama)



I had high hopes for this last segment since director Karyn Kusama did decent work on Jennifer's Body and her next film, The Invitation, was a surprisingly good movie. Her directorial and storytelling talents still shine in this final entry, however the story is such a slowburn it honestly nearly put me to sleep. It's essentially your standard spawn of Satan tale, but with a not-so-standard ending. While it is a slowburn piece, it's also the most meaningful and well written of the four entries. Though, with its pros and cons, it's ultimately it's a mixed bag for me.

While most anthologies have some kind of host or wraparound, this film offered stop motion animation that went from one story to the next. It was decent and interesting in a weird way, but didn't quite amount to much. And with only four tales in the bunch the film had a high chance of either being really good or really bad. Unfortunately this proved to be the latter of the two.

XX was sadly a wasted opportunity, where a majority of the tales (there are only 4) either make no sense or are very slow and don't amount to much. I'd recommend skipping this unless you're a die-hard anthology fan.