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The latest film from horror director Ti West (The House of the Devil), about a porn movie shoot gone wrong, is ripe with playful winks and nudges.

X has no interest in making sweeping statements about sexual liberation, about pornography or ageing. It brings the slasher back to its fleshy basics, leaning into what made the granddaddies of slasher films so memorable. At the very heart of West’s movie is the essence of independent filmmaking itself: someone wants to make art, another wants to be a star, and everyone else wants to make money.

The task of matching an all-time classic seemed impossible. But a new horror film proves that challenge was hardly insurmountable: Ti West’s X is a lurid slasher based in rural ’70s Texas that brings plenty of invention to a tried-and-true setting.

X’s exploration of the chase for youth is a riot, a cheeky splatterfest that blends nostalgia while also showcasing West’s unique talent for taking cherished horror film tropes and techniques and giving them a modern, streamlined spin. The expectations for West’s return to film were high, and luckily X brings this master of horror back with a bang.

He’s known for the deliberate pacing of his work, for drawing out anticipation of the thrill with long scenes of characters moving through spaces that seem at any moment ready to reveal something terrible. Like most of West’s films, X is not particularly ambitious in its psychology or storytelling.

West, unlike his pornographers, has things to say as well as bodies to show. Most of all, he has an aesthetic that isn’t all about terror or titillation. “X” is full of dreamy, haunting overhead shots and moments of surprising tenderness.

This isn’t a reinvention of the wheel, but a reminder of why the wheel became the industry standard in the first place. And in this instance, that wheel is being used to crush a human skull until it explodes like a rotten honeydew.

While still intermittently thrilling as a basic retro-outfitted slasher, X ultimately comes off in a way that no porn (or horror) film should: like a tease.

[A] full-tilt genre experience that is as surprising as it is savage... there are some tremendous misdirects, effective jump scares, and literal piles of gore. There just happens to be plenty of brains to go with all that blood.

As funny as X gets at times, however, it’s just as effective at providing scares as it is at provoking laughs. Once the kills begin, West unleashes heavy gore and entertaining death scenes, enhanced by effective, novel editing that West and his co-editor David Kashevaroff use to enhance the scares, or create new ones. From smash cuts and juxtapositions to cutting away from a kill to an unrelated scene to screen wipes and split-screens, X makes for an unpredictable experience.

West's frightfilms are playful - a stereotype is inverted as guys wander half-naked into their doom like stereotypical slasher starlets - but run to serious scares. X is a properly satisfying shocker.

But ultimately that aesthetic is an act of subterfuge, just like the conventions of the two stories being told: While you’re languishing in the performances and period detail, West is sneaking up to pull the rug out from beneath you, or to raze some outdated cliché. X is bloody, ballsy fun.