TO THE MAXX

WITH X AND PEARL, TI WEST CEMENTED HIS PLACE AS ONE OF MODERN CINEMA'S GREAT HORROR FILMMAKERS. NOW HE COMPLETES THE TRILOGY WITH THE EPIC MAXXXINE, SET IN 80S LOS ANGELES. TF TALKS TO WEST AND STARS MIA GOTH AND ELIZABETH DEBICKI ABOUT FAME, FEMINISM AND THE WISDOM OF INSERTING REAL-LIFE SERIAL KILLER THE NIGHT STALKER' INTO THE ACTION...

- JAMIE GRAHAM

Since then, X and Pearl have only grown in stature on the home-media markets, meaning the anticipation for MaXXXine, the third part in what West describes as a ‘weird trilogy’, is huge. Not that the writer-director has had a moment to enjoy his success...

‘I’m still so in it,’ he tells Total Film, pointing to the screen he sits before. ‘I’m talking to you in front of the computer I’m editing on. I have three days of sound mixing left, a week of colour corrections. I see the memes and I know a lot of people dress as these characters for Halloween – I’m not ignorant to it, and I’m very happy it’s connecting. But through all of that, I’ve worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for three years.’

X, lest you need reminding, followed a band of filmmakers shooting a porno on a Texas farm in 1979. It starred Jenna Ortega, who’s since become a Hollywood star, but the lead was an exemplary Mia Goth, playing dual roles: young, would-be porn star Maxine Minx, and Pearl, the octogenarian farm owner who winds up killing everyone but Maxine. Prequel Pearl was set on the same farm but in 1918, tracing the titular heroine’s first kills as her mind cracks under the duress of an oppressive mother, a sick father, the terrible isolation wrought by the Spanish flu, and her quashed dreams of escaping it all to become a star.