Warning: This article contains spoilers for X
Ti West, director of the recently released horror film, X, explains why New Zealand is the shooting location and how he made it feel like 1970s Texas. X follows a group of porn performers and their director traveling to rural Texas in order to film the movie within the movie, Debbie Does Dallas. The farmhouse that the crew arrives at houses an elderly couple as their hosts who have something more sinister than breakfast in bed to offer their guests.
Now, West has revealed in an interview with EW that the entire film was shot on one location in Whanganui, North Island, New Zealand. Upon sighting the farmhouse in Whanganui, West notes his excitement at the opportunity to "get Texas right." A separate den was built from the ground up by West and his crew in the field next to the farmhouse to add more elements of Texas in the '70s to the interior scenes. Props such as '70s-era cans of Pearl beer, a brew which originated in San Antonio, Texas, were imported along with cowhide rugs to transform the set into the eerie space shown in the film. West explained, "We didn't want it to be gross, necessarily. It was meant to be a place that was just dusty and hadn't been used in a while."
West also used a singular shooting location in The House of the Devil, which, similarly to X, garnered critical acclaim upon its release. X currently holds a 96 percent Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. Viewers will have to judge for themselves whether this score is in part due to the singular shooting location adding continuity to the world building as well as a sense of claustrophobia in X.
Sources: EW