once again, my son has gone down for what I assume will be a 35-minute nap, hopefully it’s longer, but who knows these days, he took a three-hour nap yesterday and the irony of it all is that I didn’t know what to do with myself the entire time, anyway it sure as hell doesn’t make me feel less rushed in this very moment so here we go
My standards for horror seemingly go up and up as the A24 machine ushers in a new wave of cynical, decrepit, downright bland and uninsightful material that, my god, can’t be, just can’t be the future, can it?, yet here we are as every hotshot director tries to ape Hereditary (we don’t have the heart to tell them that Ari Aster is just trying to ape Lars von Trier) and all of its genuinely interesting ideas rendered utterly insipid by a daunting lack of charm or dynamism, but praise be to the Lord Almighty because here comes Ti West with his X trilogy, attempting the most ultimate comeback in the history of horror(!), for after directing two of the best scary flicks ever, The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, he sadly made a few missteps, including a couple forgettable attempts at found footage and a dozen-or-so episodes of television nobody watched and some Western starring Ethan Hawke, but suddenly he was ready to reinvigorate his name with a three-part story that spanned several generations and tracked the rise of independent cinema and scrutinized the Hollywood Dream with the vigor and obstinance of classics like Mulholland Drive or Sunset Boulevard, and fuck yes I was here for it, and fuck yes I absolutely loved X because it was such a profound love letter to the kind of visceral, grungy, do-it-yourself-and-love-it-while-you-do-it cinema that inspired the most exciting horror auteurs of our time, like Rob Zombie and David Robert Mitchell and James Wan and Fede Álvarez and Damien Leone and Panos Cosmatos (hmmm I don’t see any A24 names…), and, of course, West (…ah, they got one!), and while X felt much different than West’s previous grainy independent work, much more modern, it still felt of his vision, it still felt penetrating in its examination of the human psyche in a world that is actively attacking it, and while I didn’t love Pearl as much as everyone else, I was still excited for the trilogy’s conclusion, MaXXXine—yet little did I know the writing was already on the wall in Pearl, a movie that recognized its commentary on Hollywood a little too distinctly, almost treating what was a profound exploration of artistry in X as a joke, as a gimmick, as the flavor of the week, and then, about 20 minutes into MaXXXine, it dawned on me, there it was, plain as day, which only became plainer and plainer as I got further and further into the story, that I was ultimately watching an A24 movie, that Pearl had already bridged an unfortunate gap away from X’s authenticity, and that MaXXXine would only further travel down that road, tossing a constant barrage of easter eggs and nods towards 80s exploitation flicks and slashers at the screen without ever, you know, actually feeling like any of those movies, which before long reminded me of the very modern and very frustrating instinct to both revere the past and distance yourself from it, to honor yet to laugh, to admire the classics on paper while also pretentiously towering over them and haughtily snorting, aka the A24 formula, and it deeply saddened me that perhaps my favorite horror director didn’t make the comeback I had expected, for while I certainly didn’t hate MaXXXine, and actually quite enjoyed the cast and some of the film’s more theatrical moments, it suddenly felt like an A24 horror movie to me in ways X, in ways even Pearl, never did. And that made me sad.
I will say, however, that by the end of MaXXXine, a strange sense of calmness and lucidity had washed over me—as Maxine’s molded head stares into the camera, in a moment that ties Pearl’s manic smile at the end of the previous movie together with our heroine’s self-destructive pursuit of fame; as the camera drifts up through the soundstage’s roof, over the studio lot’s constructed idyllic aura, all while the dire streets of Los Angeles precipitously lurk in the background; past the Hollywood sign where Maxine ultimately battles her past demons and the religious hypocrisy of America; and through the clouds and into the stars and beyond into space where Maxine’s name will both disappear and forever live on in infamy—for in that moment I felt both connected to a film that, for too many overbearing and undeniable reasons, I did not love, yet at the same time cherished, because, goddammit, A24 was awesome for giving West another chance, and yes I will be here for his next movie no matter what studio produces it, no matter how frustratingly modern it is for my old-man-trapped-in-a-young-man’s-body curmudgeon mind, because as a dad with two kids and no time, I am immensely thankful for any amount of time I get to spend in the movie theater with my favorite directors.
