MaXXXine (2024)
Directed by Ti West
In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.
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87 films that influenced MaXXXine
What critics say influenced MaXXXine
Director
Brian De Palma
Critics invoke Palma by name, and compare MaXXXine to 2 of Palma’s films.
Visuals
On Palma, rather than any one film
…the new DePalma-esque film “Maxxxine”…
DePalma’s obsession with Hitchcock…
At first glance, it’s giving Brian De Palma, Dario Argento, and Nicolas Winding Refn…
…some De Palma split screens here…
…lots of stylistic nods to Italy’s leather-gloved giallo films and the filmography of Brian De Palma…
West recreates the sweaty, voyeuristic erotic thrillers of Brian De Palma…
With moralistic fringe mobs protesting Hollywood as a “Satanic factory” and a pornstar-turned-actress finding her identity amidst serial murders, it’s easy to feel the shadow of classics like Brian DePalma’s Body Double or Paul Schrader’s Hardcore.
Nods to sophisticated, sexy thrillers like Body Double (1984) or Dressed to Kill (1980) celebrate the Americana craze over amateur investigations, where protagonists spiral deeper and deeper into a conspiracy as if pulled in by an irresistible undertow.
In Maxxxine, the series moves away from the made-in-New Zealand Texas farmhouse with adjacent alligator lake of the first two pictures into a 1980s Hollywood which is at once scuzzy and vibrant. With perfect needle drops — Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’, Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ — and an array of authentic costumes and hairdos, this inhabits video-rental space with Abel Ferrara’s Fear City, Brian De Palma’s Body Double, William Friedkin’s To Live And Die In L.A. — not to mention a whole lot of non-auteurist exploitation pictures like the teenage-hooker classic Angel trilogy, the cult-of-killers cop flick Cobra and the extraordinary mad-movie-buff film Fade To Black.
…classics of the L.A. thriller subgenera like Body Double…
West echoed Brian De Palma's Body Double…
Playing out as a seedy giallo-esque 1980s thriller akin to Dressed to Kill (1980) or Body Double (1984)…
Nods to sophisticated, sexy thrillers like Body Double (1984) or Dressed to Kill (1980) celebrate the Americana craze over amateur investigations, where protagonists spiral deeper and deeper into a conspiracy as if pulled in by an irresistible undertow.
…a modern addition to the febrile, salacious, post-Dressed to Kill slashers of the Eighties…
Playing out as a seedy giallo-esque 1980s thriller akin to Dressed to Kill (1980) or Body Double (1984)…
…its copious De Palma shout-outs (its primary stylistic inspiration seems to be the filmmaker’s early-‘80s thrillers, like Body Double and Dressed to Kill)…
Its direct Giallo influences, like De Palma’s Dressed to Kill…
Director
Alfred Hitchcock
Critics invoke Hitchcock by name, and compare MaXXXine to 2 of Hitchcock’s films.
Visuals
On Hitchcock, rather than any one film
…it unsubtly tips its hat to classics of the genre – from Alfred Hitchcock to Giallo cinema…
The chase sequence through the Universal Studios backlot takes our heroine to the hilltop house from Psycho (1960), famously associated with Norman Bates.
…and then winds up at the Bates Motel from Psycho, where she’s stalked by a sleazy private eye…
…including one in the Bates Motel set on the Universal studio lot…
…characters openly discuss the mansion looming above The Bates Motel from Psycho…
The implicitly gendered connection between horror protagonist and antagonist has been a glaring subtext ever since Psycho supplied the genre’s contemporary rubric.
Blending references from Vice Squad and classic Hollywood tales to Psycho and Giallo cinema…
The aforementioned chase scene feels like a journey through cinema in the mid-20th century with notes of classic ‘40s and ‘50s movies from The Big Sleep to Vertigo.
But this time West's influences lean into the film-noir classics set in L.A., like Roman Polanski's iconic 1974 hit, Chinatown.
…at one point he’s styled to resemble CHINATOWN’s Jake Gittes…
It feels as if West suddenly wanted to make “Chinatown” (1974) into a horror film without the hardboiled detective.
Kevin Bacon is clearly relishing donning a Chinatown style getup and hamming it up with gravelly heavy accented vocals.
…be it its Chinatown-styled private eye character…
In one sequence, in particular, Bacon resembles Jack Nicholson in Chinatown as he pursues Maxine on the Universal backlot…
…or Paul Schrader’s Hardcore…
George C. Scott’s 1979 “Hardcore” is a major influence here as well.
…pays tribute to Cruising and Hardcore…
However, the mysterious atmosphere feels tonally indebted to crime thrillers such as Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979).
…though with an ironised hint of Paul Schrader’s Hardcore from 1979…
West, a talented, ideas-driven film-maker, makes merry with contemporaneous tropes, yet falls well short of the substance or sleaze that defined Cruising, Hardcore, or the other films referenced throughout.
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Director
Dario Argento
Critics invoke Argento by name, and compare MaXXXine to 1 of Argento’s films.
Visuals
On Argento, rather than any one film
The movie is ‘80s versions of William Lustig and Dario Argento but hobbled by the overly safe and sanitized guardrails of a 2020s theme park ride.
…a mysterious figure that is seen stalking Maxine wears black leather gloves, an obvious reference to Dario Argento.
…a mysterious leather-gloved killer in the vein of Dario Argento or Brian De Palma…
…fans of Argento & Bava will take joy in the killer’s iconography and victim dispatching…
A mysterious figure who seems to have borrowed Dario Argento’s gloves…
…or Argento-style kills…
Those gloves are likely an homage to Dario Argento’s “Deep Red,” along with numerous other references scattered throughout the film.
It’s West doing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by way of Deep Red…
One watch of Argento's Deep Red (1975) will reveal just how much the giallo genre is a blueprint for West and Goth's horror tribute, with plot twists, striking colors, and a nonstop series of suspense.
…there’s “Pearl’s” Technicolor splendor, the 70s slasher feel of “X” and “Maxxxine’s” giallo grit…
MaXXXine may not be as gnarly as X or thematically interesting as Pearl; however, it gives you what you want from a summer release.
Regardless of whether you prefer the DIY approach and homage to low-budget ’70s exploitation cinema in X (2022) or the Technicolor terrors and Golden Age aesthetics of its prequel Pearl (2023), everything comes together in a satisfying, neon-bright thematic bow in MaXXXine.
…writer-director Ti West concludes his Mia Goth horror trilogy (following X and Pearl)…
Two years ago, we first met Maxine (Mia Goth; Suspiria) when the Ti West (The House of the Devil) creation X hit theaters.
“MaXXXine” is the third in Ti West’s lovingly retro trilogy of horror films that began with “X” and “Pearl” (both 2022).
“MaXXXine” is built on the bones of sex-worker vigilante cult classics like “Angel,” propaganda videos about the Satanic Panic, and just about everything on the notorious Video Nasties list. It’s not the first film to invoke those cultural curios, but coming hot on the heels of West’s acclaimed horror films “X” and “Pearl,” it seems “MaXXXine” (the third film in this horror trilogy) has a good chance of making films like “Vice Squad” popular again.
…ejected Pearl and put Maxxxine straight in…
It could easily be argued that X and Pearl were, yes, genre movies with resonant subtext.
Pearl recalling Old Hollywood with lush technicolour…
What made Pearl so innovative was that it enriched the titular character and gave her thematic reasoning for her forthcoming murderous actions.
Regardless of whether you prefer the DIY approach and homage to low-budget ’70s exploitation cinema in X (2022) or the Technicolor terrors and Golden Age aesthetics of its prequel Pearl (2023), everything comes together in a satisfying, neon-bright thematic bow in MaXXXine.
…from filming The House of the Devil like a 70s TV horror or using the Jonestown cult massacre as a template for The Sacrament.
Ti West has proven to be one of the most versatile horror filmmakers working today. Even before he launched his X trilogy, he showcased his astute minimalism in his 2013 found footage cult film, The Sacrament.
…using the Jonestown cult massacre as a template for The Sacrament…
The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers, and The Sacrament all ingeniously use the nostalgic trappings of the past to unloose and exploit contemporary fears.
…pays tribute to Cruising…
West, a talented, ideas-driven film-maker, makes merry with contemporaneous tropes, yet falls well short of the substance or sleaze that defined Cruising, Hardcore, or the other films referenced throughout.
Manifesting the atmospheric sleaze of psychosexual thrillers such as William Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) and Brian De Palma’s Body Double (1984)…
A menacing stranger clad in taut, rippling leather (shades of Cruising) sics his goon (Kevin Bacon) on her, sends her incriminating footage from the massacre on Pearl’s farm, and begins picking off her friends.
…to William Friedkin’s “Cruising,”…
…she lands the part in The Puritan II (a take on The Exorcist)…
…this inhabits video-rental space with Abel Ferrara’s Fear City, Brian De Palma’s Body Double, William Friedkin’s To Live And Die In L.A.
Director
John Carpenter
Critics invoke Carpenter by name, and compare MaXXXine to 1 of Carpenter’s films.
Visuals
On Carpenter, rather than any one film
…more reminiscent of Sean S. Cunningham junk than Tobe Hooper or John Carpenter…
Set roughly six years after the darkly funny yet also sharp X (these movies once had characters with depth), Maxine Minx is in Los Angeles, now making the leap from porn to horror, prepared to one day be a star just like Halloween did for a young and talented Jamie Lee Curtis.
From the Scream sequels to the Halloween reboots, the perpetual retraumatization of the Final Girl has been done ad nauseam.
With Janet Leigh paving the way for an actress like Jamie Lee Curtis to parlay her own career into a “respectable” one after starring in 1978’s Halloween.
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In addition to its many cultural signifiers (New Coke! John Parr’s theme song from “St. Elmo’s Fire”! Cocaine!), “MaXXXine” also homages many different directors and films of the period—the most glaringly obvious to me being Vernon Zimmerman’s “Fade to Black” (1980), Lucio Fulci’s “The New York Ripper” (1982), Gary Sherman’s “Vice Squad” (1982), Robert Vincent O’Neil’s “Angel” (1983), and Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” (1984).
…or, to a lesser extent Angel…
…non-auteurist exploitation pictures like the teenage-hooker classic Angel trilogy…
…or Robert Vincent O'Neil's "Angel."
…classics of the L.A. thriller subgenera like Body Double or Vice Squad…
…even if your average movie fan isn't familiar with Gary Sherman's "Vice Squad,"…
Blending references from Vice Squad and classic Hollywood tales to Psycho and Giallo cinema…
Gary Sherman’s “Vice Squad” (1982)…