X

The Unseen Guest: How X Turns Grief Into a Haunting

I keep thinking about the way horror films handle grief—not as a backdrop, but as the monster itself. X (2024), the new Netflix horror-thriller from director Jayden Miles, doesn’t just use loss as a plot device; it lets it fester, unchecked, until the audience is left wondering whether the entity on screen is real or just a manifestation of a mind breaking under the weight of what it can’t accept. The film follows a teacher (Inira Hurford) who spirals into hallucinations after the death of a friend, her sanity unraveling as an anonymous exterminator—referred to only as "X"—releases something called "Entity A" into her world. What begins as a psychological descent quickly blurs into something more ambiguous, and that ambiguity is where X finds its footing.

The research pack notes that this X is a separate beast from Ti West’s 2022 slasher of the same name, and that distinction matters. Where West’s film was a love letter to 1970s grindhouse cinema, dripping with blood and camp, Miles’ X is quieter, more insidious. It’s less about the spectacle of terror and more about the slow erosion of a person’s grip on reality. The premise alone—grief as a contagion, a literal entity—feels like a fresh twist on the "is it real or in her head?" trope, even if the execution occasionally stumbles. There’s a moment early on where Hurford’s character, still clinging to routine, teaches a class while her vision flickers between the mundane and the monstrous. The camera lingers on her face, the way her eyes dart to empty corners of the room, her breath shallow. It’s a small choice, but an effective one: the horror isn’t in the jump scares (though there are a few), but in the creeping dread of knowing she’s losing herself.