What actually happens
A guesthouse rented under false pretenses
The movie opens with police arriving at a farm in rural Texas in 1979 and finding bodies wrapped in bags, and then goes back twenty-four hours. Maxine, who wants to be an adult film star, travels with her producer fiance Wayne, the burlesque dancer Bobby-Lynne, Bobby-Lynne's boyfriend Jackson, the director RJ and RJ's shy girlfriend Lorraine. They rent a guesthouse from an elderly couple, Howard and his wife Pearl. Howard is unfriendly, and Wayne smooths it over by keeping the nature of the shoot to himself. Pearl watches Maxine swim naked in a lake and invites her into the farmhouse, where she shows an odd fixation on her because Maxine resembles Pearl at a younger age. Howard comes home and Pearl hurries Maxine out and asks her to keep quiet. Pearl also watches Maxine shoot a scene in the barn, then tries to seduce Howard, who turns her down because of his heart.
Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.
Pearl in the driveway
That night Lorraine takes part in the shoot, which upsets RJ. Once everyone is asleep, he gets angry and goes to drive off, hoping to leave the others stranded at the farm, and finds Pearl waiting in the driveway. He rejects her advances, and that is the scene people dread most. Pearl stabs him repeatedly in the neck and takes his head off. It is the first killing in the movie, and the rest of the group is asleep when it happens. Lorraine and Wayne notice he is missing and go to look for him.
Howard needs a flashlight from the basement
Wayne steps on a large nail in the barn, and Pearl stabs him in the eyes with a pitchfork. Howard tricks Lorraine into the house with a story about Pearl being missing, sends her to the basement for a flashlight, and locks the door behind her. Down there she finds a dead man with no clothes on, hanging from the ceiling. Howard asks Jackson to help look for Pearl, they split up around the lake, and Jackson finds a car under the water. Howard then shoots him in the chest. Meanwhile Pearl slips into the guesthouse, takes her clothes off and lies down next to Maxine. Maxine wakes up in horror, and her scream wakes Bobby-Lynne.
One alligator and a twitching corpse
Lorraine hacks her way out of the basement with a hatchet, and Howard answers by breaking her fingers. Bobby-Lynne finds Pearl at the edge of the lake and tries to help her, and Pearl mocks her, shoves her into the lake, and an alligator gets her. Pearl and Howard go to the guesthouse and have sex. Maxine escapes to the van with a pistol, frees Lorraine, and sees her run out the front door, where Howard shoots her. As the couple carry Lorraine's body into the house, it twitches and startles Howard so much that he has a fatal heart attack.
The ending, explained
Maxine takes the keys to Howard's truck and tries to shoot Pearl, but the pistol is empty. Pearl fires Howard's gun at her, misses, and the recoil knocks her onto the porch, where she breaks her hip. Pearl insults Maxine while she climbs into the truck, and Maxine reverses over Pearl's head and drives away. Everyone else in the crew is dead. Maxine turns out to be the daughter of the televangelist whose voice is heard throughout the movie. The police find RJ's camera, and the sheriff guesses that it holds footage of a terrible horror picture.
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed either way whether there is a scene after the credits.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: no dog in this one, though an alligator is around.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is X scary?
Yes. X is a 6 out of 10 with medium dread, a lot of jump scares and several graphic deaths, plus some nudity. It lasts about a night.
How does X end?
Maxine is the only member of the crew who survives. Howard dies of a heart attack, and she runs over Pearl with his truck and drives away. The police find RJ's camera.
Does the dog die in X?
No, because there is no dog in X. An alligator kills a character, and an animal dies in one scene.
Is there a post-credits scene in X?
Nobody has confirmed whether X has a scene after the credits, so there is no reliable answer.
Who is Pearl in X?
Pearl is the elderly wife of Howard, the farm owner who rents the crew a guesthouse in X. She is fixated on Maxine because Maxine looks like she did when she was young, and she kills several of the crew.
