"X-Cross" sort of surprised me, as I had assumed it would be another one of those countless gory splatter movies that have made it out of Japan in the recent years. However, "X-Cross" was far from it. It was actually a really great suspense/horror movie.
The story is about Shiyori (played by Nao Matsushita) and Aiko (played by Ami Suzuki) who travel to hot springs located at a very remote village. But things are not all as they seem; not in the village, not with the people, not with the friendship. Shiyori and Aiko find themselves stranded in a remote village with no one but themselves to trust, or can they?
I found the story to be really great because it builds up the suspense so nicely, letting the story brood and seep in, then flash back and show you other sides of occurring events. Now that was a thing I thoroughly enjoyed about the movie, it was so nicely done, and it really unravelled my theories by shedding new light on situations that I just saw in the movie. And the plot kept shifting, so it was not possible to predict what was happening or what was going to happen. The ending of the movie, well that was really bad, in my opinion. I didn't care for that ending at all. Actually the entire movie was great, but the last 20 to 30 minutes was sort of fighting an uphill battle, the movie started slipping during that time and becoming anti-climatic and just downright stupid.
The people they had cast for the various roles in "X-Cross" were actually doing good jobs with their given roles, and the characters were really fleshed out as believable and realistic. Well, what happened to Reiko was just a bit too much, it was so over the top that it stopped being realistic.
"X-Cross" has a really good mood to it, the environment was well used, and you sit with a sensation of being trapped and isolated out in the woods, so they managed to capture the right setting for the movie.
So looking away from the last 20 to 30 minutes of the movie, then I found "X-Cross" to be a really nice movie, and it was nicely build up leaving you guessing as to whom did what and who can be trusted, then only to completely unravel your theories as you are given new bits and pieces of information.
The IMDb genres labeled to this movie are action, adventure and comedy. That kind of makes me wonder, because I didn't find the movie to be that at all.
