Welcome to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Trauma
If you’ve ever wanted to see a horror anthology that feels like the cinematic equivalent of a feminist fever dream—a cross between Creepshow and The Handmaid’s Tale—then congratulations, you’ve found it. XX (2017) is an all-female-directed horror omnibus that proves women can scare the hell out of you while still maintaining impeccable visual style and emotional depth.
Directed by Jovanka Vuckovic, Annie Clark (better known as the musician St. Vincent), Roxanne Benjamin, and Karyn Kusama, this film is a four-part horror buffet: psychological dread, absurd comedy, monster mayhem, and maternal apocalypse, all wrapped up in stop-motion weirdness involving a haunted dollhouse that looks like something Tim Burton built on Ambien.
It’s dark, it’s witty, it’s feminist horror that doesn’t preach—it just bites.
The Framing Device: Creepy Dollhouse, Now With Feelings
Before we even get to the stories, XX introduces us to an animated dollhouse with a living face and a severed hand that crawls around collecting junk like a morbid raccoon. Directed by Sofia Carrillo, these interludes are pure arthouse madness—think Coraline meets House of 1000 Corpses.
It’s weird, it’s haunting, and it sets the mood perfectly: this isn’t your average “boo!” anthology. This is horror filtered through lace curtains, lipstick, and latent anxiety. The dollhouse, by the way, ends up putting a dead bird inside a girl’s chest so she can wake up again. You know, normal bedtime imagery.
If that doesn’t tell you what kind of ride you’re in for, nothing will.
Segment One: The Box (Directed by Jovanka Vuckovic)
A boy on a train looks inside a stranger’s red box and promptly stops eating. His sister and father soon follow, leaving mom to watch her family waste away while still somehow preparing Christmas dinner. It’s Jack Ketchum by way of Martha Stewart—a bleak, chilling story about maternal helplessness and the devouring power of curiosity.
Vuckovic plays it straight, and the result is eerie perfection. There’s no gore, no explanation, just the slow horror of watching your loved ones slip away for reasons that make no sense. The mother’s nightmare—where her family finally eats again but it’s her they’re carving up—is the kind of image that sticks in your brain like leftover turkey.
The ending, with the mother haunting train stations looking for that damn box, is both tragic and darkly hilarious. What was in it? Nothing. Which makes sense—existential horror, after all, thrives on disappointment.
Segment Two: The Birthday Party (Directed by Annie Clark a.k.a. St. Vincent)
If Wes Anderson made a Weekend at Bernie’s remake, it would look like this. Melanie Lynskey plays Mary, a pastel-clad mom trying to throw the perfect birthday party for her daughter. The only hiccup? Her husband’s dead in his home office, and she really doesn’t want to ruin the cake.
The tone is absurdist gold—every frame feels like a parody of suburban perfection on the brink of collapse. The bright, bubblegum color palette only makes it funnier as Mary drags her husband’s corpse around the house, shoving him into panda costumes and propping him up like a twisted Build-A-Bear.
When the kids finally discover Dad stuffed into a giant panda suit, the film flashes its full title: The Birthday Party, or, The Memory Lucy Suppressed From Her Seventh Birthday That Wasn’t Really Her Mom’s Fault (Even Though Her Therapist Says It’s Probably Why She Fears Intimacy).
That subtitle alone deserves an award.
It’s less a horror short and more a biting satire of domestic anxiety, but Lynskey sells every second of it with her trademark “I’m fine” smile that clearly means she’s about two cupcakes away from snapping.
Segment Three: Don’t Fall (Directed by Roxanne Benjamin)
Okay, enough laughs—it’s time for good, old-fashioned monster chaos. Four friends head into the desert, discover an ancient cave painting, and accidentally summon something that looks like a demonic bodybuilder covered in eczema.
The beauty of Don’t Fall is its simplicity—it’s the “monster in the dark” short every anthology needs. Benjamin keeps it fast, nasty, and refreshingly practical. The creature effects are physical, gooey, and delightfully 1980s. It’s the one segment that doesn’t mess around with metaphors—it just wants to bite your face off, and sometimes that’s exactly what horror should do.
It’s also the perfect palette cleanser between the existential despair of The Box and the emotional carnage of the finale. Like a shot of tequila between therapy sessions.
Segment Four: Her Only Living Son (Directed by Karyn Kusama)
And now, the pièce de résistance: Karyn Kusama’s quietly devastating Her Only Living Son. If The Omen were told from the mother’s point of view—and if the mother were determined to love her Antichrist no matter what—you’d get this masterpiece.
Cora (Christina Kirk) is a single mom raising her teenage son Andy (Kyle Allen), who’s starting to sprout claws and telepathically dominate everyone around him. Instead of going full Exorcist, Kusama crafts a story about unconditional love in the face of literal evil.
It’s heartbreaking, terrifying, and oddly beautiful. When Cora refuses to give her son up to Satan and the two die in each other’s arms as their bodies crack and bleed, it’s not just horror—it’s opera.
It’s also a quietly feminist mic drop: a mother’s love, even for the devil himself, is more powerful than patriarchal damnation. And honestly, that’s metal as hell.
Why XX Works (and Why It Shouldn’t)
Horror anthologies are notoriously uneven—usually two great shorts, one okay one, and one that makes you check your phone. XX, though, maintains a consistency rare for the format. Each story has its own flavor, tone, and texture, but together they form a thematic symphony about womanhood, fear, and the monstrous beauty of survival.
It’s not just horror “by women”—it’s horror about women, exploring the terrors of motherhood, guilt, social expectations, and identity. These aren’t damsels in distress—they’re complex, flawed, occasionally homicidal, and always fascinating.
Sure, the pacing stumbles occasionally, and the framing animation might be a little too art-school for some, but the ambition alone earns applause. It’s a film made with care, craft, and a delightfully dark sense of humor.
Aesthetics: Pretty, Polished, and Positively Deranged
Each segment looks incredible in its own way. The Box is wintery and sterile, like grief under fluorescent light. The Birthday Party bursts with garish color and creeping absurdity. Don’t Fall embraces the harsh, dusty chaos of creature-feature nostalgia. And Her Only Living Son bathes its apocalypse in soft, tragic warmth.
Even the stop-motion transitions are mesmerizing, like peeking into a demented dollhouse built by Guillermo del Toro’s niece.
You could frame half the shots in this movie and hang them in a haunted art gallery.
Final Thoughts: The Future Is Female (and Also Terrifying)
XX isn’t just a great horror anthology—it’s a declaration. It’s proof that women in horror aren’t limited to running upstairs when they should run outside; they’re directing the nightmare, writing the rules, and making you question why we ever let anyone else hold the camera.
It’s a film that’s stylish, intelligent, and darkly funny in a “laugh so you don’t cry” kind of way. Whether it’s a mother haunted by hunger, a housewife hiding a corpse, a camper fighting a monster, or a mother hugging the Antichrist to death, XX shows every shade of female fear—and makes it look damn good.
So here’s to the women who make horror mean something. And to XX, which proves once and for all that the scariest thing in any movie isn’t the monster under the bed—it’s Mom when you don’t finish your dinner.
