Ti West

Ti West is, to borrow the title of Jerry Lewis’ best-selling book, The Total Filmmaker. For the majority of his features, West has been a director, writer, producer, and editor; occasionally, he also serves as cinematographer and even composer. (He also sometimes acts, usually in director friend Joe Swanberg’s indie movies.) Like another total filmmaker, Jordan Peele, West is both an intense cinephile and maven for horror movies: It’s hard to think of another American filmmaker of his generation who is more dedicated to the genre (even given his occasional departures from it), and more accomplished while operating on usually tiny budgets.

With the backing of acclaimed horror filmmaker Larry Fessenden, Ti West delivered a knockout feature debut with his very scary The Roost (2005), with Tom Noonan. West’s sophomore feature veered a bit from horror to thriller-in-a-forest mode with the excellent, taut Trigger Man (2007), featuring Reggie Cunningham, Ray Sullivan, and Sean Reid. Premiering in the Tribeca Film Festival, West’s third feature was a strong return to horror, The House of the Devil (2009), starring Noonan, Mary Woronov, Greta Gerwig, and Dee Wallace, and playing off the “satanic panic” scare of the 1980s, while stylistically harkening back to 1970s horror cinema.

After taking on the directing chores of the Eli Roth-written Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009), West eventually demanded that his name be removed from the film credits after producers and distributor Lionsgate took over the production in the editing phase. Because he was then not a signatory to the Directors Guild of America, West’s demand was rejected. He denounces the film.

Ti West moved into supernatural horror (and shifted from his usual medium of 16mm film to 35mm film) for his next project, the excellent The Innkeepers (2011), with Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, and Kelly McGillis, which premiered at the SXSW Festival. Once again, Larry Fessenden served as producer with West. West’s extremely violent The Sacrament (2013), borrowed from story aspects of the 1973 Jonestown Massacre for its found-footage concept, featuring a cast including two filmmakers in their own right (Joe Swanberg and Kentucker Audley), along with indie stars Kate Lyn Shiel and Amy Seimetz.

It marked West’s first premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Although it was his first true commercial bomb, West received high marks for his first non-horror film, the western In a Valley of Violence (2016), starring Ethan Hawke, John Travolta, Taissa Farmiga, and James Ransone.

In a busy 2022, Ti West again directed, wrote, produced, and edited—this time, back to horror with the slasher film, X, starring Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, and Martin Henderson. Perversely, while X was released first in the spring (soon after premiering in the SXSW Festival), its prequel (which was secretly filmed back-to-back), titled Pearl, was first presented in fall 2022 at the Venice Film Festival.

(This reverse order has been explained as a result of West having shot X with no intention of a companion film, but having written out a lengthy background of his evil main character Pearl during the production of X, he decided to make a feature based on the origin story.) West’s movie starred Goth again Again starring Goth as the title character, Pearl also featured David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, and Matthew Sunderland. Each film—released within six months of each other—was handled by indie distributor A24.

Ti West was director-writer-producer-editor of his third installment in the X movie series with the Los Angeles-based MaXXXine (2024), with Mia Goth resuming her role as Maxine, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, and Kevin Bacon, and which was released by A24.