The Perfect Companion to ‘MaXXXine’ Isn’t ‘X,’ It’s This Underrated Noir A24 Gem

Ti West’s new A24 slasher MaXXXine brings X protagonist Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) back to our silver screens. This time, the emerging starlet is pursuing fame in the context of the Night Stalker’s real-life 1985 Los Angeles reign of terror. As Maxine’s friends start to drop (seemingly thanks to the Night Stalker), she begins to receive suspicious communications from a mysterious source. Discontented with the prospect of involving the police, Maxineundergoes her own investigation to get to the bottom of it all. The danger of her investigation follows her through a variety of Los Angeles landmarks, from Mann’s Chinese Theater (as it was named in the era) to studio backlots and the top of the Hollywood Hills. The film is a perfect companion to another A24 metafiction about shady happenings in the heart of Hollywood… David Robert Mitchell’s A24 stoner-noir Under the Silver Lake.

Like MaXXXine, Under the Silver Lake similarly features a Los Angeles both under the threat of a mysterious killer (here the Dog Killer) and plagued by the disappearances of young women (albeit with a very different resolution). The film follows Sam (Andrew Garfield), a protagonist nowhere near as ambitious as Maxine, until he falls for (read: becomes obsessed with) his new neighbor Sarah (Riley Keough). When Sarah disappears, Sam goes on a journey that takes him into the deep underbelly of Los Angeles in obsessive pursuit of the truth. It’s an engaging, sometimes surreal tripfueled by subtle Hollywood nostalgia and growing paranoia, the other side to MaXXXine‘s own exploration of Hollywood excess.

Beware the Dog Killer in ‘Under The Silver Lake’

In Under the Silver Lake, it’s clear from moment one that something’s not quite right with Sam. He’s a slacker and a charmer (it’s Andrew Garfield after all) who passes time by spying on his somewhat nudist neighbor next door. He’s weirdly preoccupied with the Dog Killer, wanting to contact the author of a local comic about the fiend, and (also strangely) carries dog treats around despite not actually having a dog. When he leaves Sarah’s apartment after watching the Marilyn Monroe classic How to Marry a Millionaire, Sam catches a set of kids vandalizing the neighborhood cars, including scratching a vulgar image on his own. It’s a nice car, sure, but Sam attacks the kids–punching them repeatedly, and even kicking one on the ground, and you can see the rage in his face… it’s a shockingly violent pivot for the character, followed by a surreal and violent dream where a Sarah-like person chews a corpse while barking like a dog. The film never makes it transparently clear, but one popular theory is that Sam himself may actually be the dreaded Dog Killer.

Sam and Sarah had plans the next day, but to his surprise, he finds her gone without a trace, sparking a paranoid investigation that leads Sam to trendy rooftop performances, screenings at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, subterranean tunnels, secret codes in video game maps and mass media, and a strange cult among extremely wealthy people that’s connected Shooting Star Escorts, an escort service promising to connect its wealthy customers to “Hollywood’s Up and Coming Ingenues!” Sarah was connected to Shooting Star Escorts, and it’s the reason she disappeared off the face of the Earth. Under The Silver Lake‘s view of Hollywood is as a playground for nefarious, rich, powerful players who actively work to control the world through intentional media manipulations, and who claim the lives of young women with stars in their eyes (albeit in surprising ways). If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it shares a clear kinship to what’s really going on in MaXXXine, though a sort of inverse version of that film’s events.

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What really makes Under The Silver Lake an underrated modern classic is its specific way of updating classic noir tropes. Even if Sam isn’t the dreaded Dog Killer, he’s at best a morally compromised dirtbag detective. He’s a fiscally irresponsible, obsessive Peeping Tom, who most likely starts down the investigator’s path because he has a crush on his pretty blonde neighbor. The fact that there seems to be a massive conspiracy here isn’t because he’s brilliant, it’s just a happy side-effect of an obsessive weirdo being obsessively weird about a girl. Otto Preminger‘s Laura, a stunningly excellent noir, centers on a detective who falls in love with the murdered executive at the heart of his case. Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo sees investigator “Scotty” Ferguson (James Stewart) become obsessed with the mysterious blonde he’s investigating. Nicolas Winding Refn‘s gorgeous neo-noir Drive sees Ryan Gosling‘s mysterious getaway driver is driven to violence to protect his beautiful, sweet blonde neighbor (Carey Mulligan), while Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Boulevard follows shifty insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) driven to murder over his obsession with a dame, Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck). Under The Silver Lake is an excellent continuation of the freakishly blonde-obsessed, morally compromised noir protagonist pipeline, made fresh through its ties to the darker elements of Hollywood and covered over with Andrew Garfield’s limitness natural charm.

Two Tales of A Terrorized, Conspiracy-Ruled Los Angeles

There are a number of similarities that run through the heart of both Under the Silver Lake and MaXXXine. Stylistically, both films are somewhat unusual noir films at their heart, each simultaneously critical of and nostalgic about classic Hollywood. MaXXXine is a tale of a young starlet looking to get her big mainstream break, but while she loves the limelight, there’s always a downside to the dream and a seediness that pervades Hollywood. Here, the beautiful blonde starlet is the morally compromised investigator in the city’s seedy underbelly, sidestepping the law and searching for truth in her own way and on her own terms. She’s a sex-positive, fame-aspiring, coke-sniffing, tough-as-nails starlet who will literally crush adversaries under her heel, an investigator absolutely in line with noir’s best. When we discover the details around the film’s true antagonist(s), the only reason young women are victimized is because of their vulnerability in 1985 Los Angeles. Here, it’s a place where money and bright lights rule, and the flashiest of the 1% walks the streets alongside pimps, dealers, and thieves… but it’s the former you have to be wary of most.

Similarly, Under the Silver Lake‘s journey into Hollywood showcases a lot of classic entertainment, posters, iconography, and young, excited, hopeful starlets, but behind the glamor is a cult of wealthy men who contract with an extremely shady escort service for nefarious purposes. There’s also the issue of a genuine, decades-long conspiracy to infest all pop culture with pacifying messages (a plan right out of John Carpenter‘s They Live), so something’s clearly rotten in Hollywood. It’s another critical reminder not to trust the rich and powerful, a favorite topic in many noir and neo-noir entries (perhaps nowhere more famously than in Roman Polanski‘s Chinatown). Yet again Under the Silver Lake finds a unique voice in the genre, given that we’re following a possible serial killer of man’s best friend and yet, somehow, Sam isn’t the creepiest person audiences meet in the film. It’s an engaging riff on another, related noir theme: some investigations are so corrupt, dangerous, or heinous that a morally perfect hero isn’t the right person for the job. Instead, it may take a morally gray protagonist to get to the bottom of it.

Each film showcases a protagonist with a penchant for violence going on a rogue investigation into Hollywood’s terrorized underbelly, discovering a conspiracy that manipulates sex workers, serves the wealthy, and attempts to use the media to disempower the masses. At the same time, there are relevant differences between the films. Maxine doesn’t kill from some malicious drive to do so (unlike whatever drives Sam to kill dogs, if he indeed is the Dog Killer). Rather, Maxine’s ambition puts herself in the crosshairs of dangerous people, and she won’t blink twice before killing her way through those obstacles. Moreover, the conspiracies of Under the Silver Lake are orchestrated by powerful cultural players in Hollywood towards their own self-aggrandizement (not to give too much away). In MaXXXine (again, not to give too much away), very different motivations are at play. The nature of these films’ ultimate antagonists and the fate of their young women may have differences, but both films are excellent A24 hybrid-noirs that reveal the darkness beneath Hollywood’s bright marquee lights. X may be MaXXXine‘s immediate precursor, but Under the Silver Lake is the perfect flipside to its murderous neon-lit coin.

Under the Silver Lake is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S.

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