MaXXXine, the latest high-sleaze shocker from horror auteur Ti West, opens with a montage of archival footage plunging us headfirst into the height of 80s satanic panic. West’s X trilogy, which MaXXXine concludes, is preoccupied by America’s never-ending conflict between old-school puritanism and the liberalisation of social norms, and MaXXXine makes the subject more explicit than ever. The film follows adult movie star antiheroine Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) trying to make the jump into Hollywood during the height of “moral majority” conservatism in the mid-80s, while being pursued by a serial killer.
Growing up in Delaware in the 80s, West remembers being perplexed by the censoriousness he would later go on to lampoon. “I remember older siblings who were into heavy metal music were looked down upon, like, ‘Are they actually evil people?’” he recalls. “I was like, ‘That’s my babysitter – if they’re evil, I’m screwed!’”
