MAXXXINE (2024)
West's Maxine trilogy feels like it was always pointed toward Hollywood—and placing 2024 Mia Goth into the timeline fixed in place by the late-70s events of X (2022) means that the 1980s is just naturally the place where we end up. Whether by design or not, this is fortunate for West, because it gives him a lot to work with: we land fruitfully in an era where porn and horror are both nipping at the mainstream's heels, emboldened by growing critical attention and commerical success. This also gives West an opportunity to depict the rise of both the home video market (which plays the role of a sort of ally to these still-disreputable genres) and of 80s "Satanic Panic" evangelicals (who serve as a readymade antagonist). It's a terrific, sleazy milieu to play around in, rich with opportunities for ingenious riffing, and this is before you even get to the film-within-a-film, a meta-conceit that allows us to indulge in watching our characters wandering around in studio-stage settings, gazing at simulacra—including nothing less than the Bates Motel and Psycho house, a replica of a fake original (assembled for the 1980s filming of Psycho 2.) Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good academic monograph with all that stuff! One almost feels that West has earned the rather self-congratulatory line here about how horror produces "B movies with A ideas." Except —
—except, well, a milieu isn't exactly an idea, is it? And when you scratch at the surface here a little bit to see what the "ideas" actually are, to see what West actually has to say about any of this heady material, you come away pretty much empty handed. The absence of "A ideas" wouldn't matter so much if the "B movie" part was handled with real zest or enthusiasm, but West seems to be approaching it all a bit half-heartedly, and the end result denies us the supply of lowbrow pleasures that we got from X. (Mia is always compelling on screen, and Kevin Bacon is having fun chewing scenery, but they're both trapped in a script that doesn't make much sense and forces them into interactions that get us to a workable run-time but don't serve much other function.)
Like any good horror sicko, I perked up upon noticing the presence of some tropes and motifs drawn from giallo, but West does not now possess (and never has possessed, imo) the unhinged sensuality or the inventive sadism that giallo is so known for, so these end up functioning as another set of inert signifiers in a movie devoted to them, producing just another hollow copy. (You want a meta-giallo that is visually lush, wickedly vicious, and actually the product of a questing A-level intelligence? May I recommend The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears?)
jbushnell
