Movies

Sex! Satan! Slow burn horror!: EW's guide to the films of X director Ti West

A deep dive into the fright-filled oeuvre of the House of the Devil filmmaker.

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Published on March 19, 2022 01:24PM EDT

Ti West has never directed a blockbuster film but the writer-director's name is well known to horror fans thanks to his slow-burn creepfests The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers. With the filmmaker's new movie X now playing in cinemas, here is your guide to the thrills and chills of West's filmography.

Brittany Snow X — Brittany Snow in X. Christopher Moss/A24

The Roost (2005)

West's low-budget first film finds a quartet of friends being menaced by bats whose victims reanimate into the walking dead. Tom Noonan (Manhunter) plays a horror host who introduces the deliciously batty debut, which was produced by indie-horror legend Larry Fessenden.

"I was at film school and Kelly Reichardt (director of Old Joy and First Cow) was a teacher," West told this writer in 2012. "Larry had acted in and edited her first movie, River of Grass. I called him, and we got along really well, and he saw my short films over the years. He said, 'Why don't you make a feature? If I gave you a little bit of money, could you just go do it with not a lot of help?' I probably lied and said 'Yes.' So he gave us $50,000 and we made The Roost."

Trigger Man (2007)

West's second film was made for even less money than his first and is about as barebones as movies get. The director still manages to create a sense of ever-increasing dread in this tale of three hunters who find themselves the prey of a killer.

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009)

West's sequel to Eli Roth's 2002 movie about a flesh-eating virus relocates the gore-drenched action from the remote woods to a high school prom. The director's original cut was met coolly by distribution company Lionsgate and the film was re-edited without West's input while he was shooting his next film, The House of the Devil, to the filmmaker's chagrin.

"I met a lot great people on the movie," West said. "I think probably more good came out of it than bad. It's just I'm embarrassed to have my name on it."

The House of the Devil (2009)

West's most-beloved film stars Jocelin Donahue as Samantha Hughes, a short-on-cash college student who takes a babysitting gig at a remote mansion. Alas, the house's owners, played by Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, turn out to be devil-worshippers in need of a blood sacrifice. The House of the Devil is set in the '80s and West recreates the period with jaw-dropping accuracy, from the music to the clothes to the feathered hair of Samantha's best friend, played by Greta Gerwig.

"We've gotten so much credit for that," said West. "I was like, well, the first thing anyone is going to poke me with is 'Uh, that's not from the '80s!' I was like, I can't let them get me with that. To make it look '80s is just hard work. It's not creativity. It's just, to not do it would be me being lazy."

The Innkeepers (2011)

Sara Paxton and Pat Healy play employees at the Yankee Pedlar Inn who make the mistake of trying to find out if rumors about the establishment being haunted are true. West was inspired to write the film by his spooky experiences staying at the Yankee Pedlar — a real hotel in Torrington, CT. — while shooting The House of the Devil.

"When we made House of the Devil we stayed at the Yankee Pedlar because it was a cheap place," said West. "We would drive 30 minutes to set every day to make a Satanic horror movie — but weirder things happened back at the hotel. Every night you had weird dreams. The phone would ring, and you'd answer, and no one would be there. Apparently, that happens a lot. I didn't think much of it until a year later when I wanted to make a ghost story and it just occurred to me: Whoah, what if I made the one I lived?"

The Sacrament (2014)

West played, to perfection, an indie filmmaker in Adam Wingard's 2011 horror movie You're Next and ported over four of that film's cast (Amy Seimetz, Joe Swanberg, AJ Bowen, Kate Lyn Sheil) for this found footage film about a religious cult. The result is very grim but worth checking out for veteran actor Gene Jones' turn as the cult's seductive Jim Jones-esque leader "Father."

"He believes absolutely poisonous things, but he would do anything for you," Jones told EW in 2014.

In the Valley of Violence (2016)

West went West for this tale of murderous cowboys. Ethan Hawke plays a drifter who faces off against John Travolta's one-legged sheriff in a tale whose stacked supporting cast includes Taissa Farmiga, James Ransone, Karen Gillan, Toby Huss, and Larry Fessenden.

"I grew up watching Westerns," West told EW at the time of the film's release. "By the end of The Sacrament, I was so burned out on realism — both thematically and technically — that I wanted to make something traditionally cinematic. And to me, the most traditionally cinematic genre in American cinema is the Western. When you're sitting there, on a dolly, with a camera pointed at Ethan Hawke, on a horse, with a gun, and a dog, and John Travolta with a wooden leg, you're like, I've done something right!"

X (2022)

After spending the last six years directing TV shows like Wayward Pines and Them, West has now returned to big screen horror with the '70s-set X. Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow, Scott Mescudi (A.K.A. Kid Cudi), Martin Henderson, and Owen Campbell play the cast and crew of a porn movie whose shoot goes horribly awry.

"They rent out this farmhouse to shoot an adult film for the weekend," says Ortega. "Everybody is going into this with really high hopes, and the older couple they rented it from is maybe not the most inviting, and maybe a little bit too curious about what's going on. [The script was] the most outrageous thing I've ever read."

"For its whole running time, X has ideas on its mind," EW's Joshua Rothkopf wrote in his review. "Like the doubled-edged title itself, both an evocation of the grungy rating this movie might have received in 1979 and something more suggestive, it indicates a film that feels unpinned, ominous, and potentially unforgettable."