"The Box" is the first vignette, about the disintegration of a family when a young boy stops eating after a mysterious stranger on the subway shows him what's in a gift-wrapped box. Nothing his parents do will convince him to eat and when he tells his big sister what he saw, things get even worse. There is some great makeup work here but I was left wanting more with the story. Creepy and horror-tinged but not at all scary.
The second installment is "The Birthday Party," which is more of a dark comedy starring Melanie Lynskey as a tightly-wound suburban housewife determined to hide her husband's dead body (heart attack or maybe a suicide) on the date of her daughter's birthday party. It's very stylish and nervous, and Lynskey's antics entertaining as she drags the body from room to room, trying to hide in a house with interior glass walls, but you really do wonder why she wouldn't just call the cops/paramedics upon finding him. Not horror in the slightest.
"Don't Fall" is the most classic horror of the four - and, oddly, the one I was bored with: four hipster/stoner/city types head to the desert for a weekend of RV camping. They find some pictographs and manage to awaken a monster, which rips its way through the four friends. I thought the monster was pretty great but I didn't connect at all with the annoying campers.
The last short is "Her Only Living Son," a Rosemary's Baby/The Omen riff. When Cora's son turns 18, she is dismayed to find him turning angry and violent. She is even more dismayed when the high school principal refuses to punish Cora's son after he rips off a classmate's fingernails (yikes!), instead brushing off the incident because he's a "special, special boy." Again, horror-tinged but not scary. And look, motherhood can be scary: see The Babadook.
Ultimately, XX is a great idea in concept - I would love to see more women directing horror - it just falls short in execution.
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