Report: Slasher Throwback 'MaXXXine' May Hint at a Very '80s Gay Subtext

Sharp-eyed viewers with a love for '80s slasher movies have made a compelling case for the possibility that there's a whole hidden layer to the new Ti West movie "MaXXXine."

Writing for Polygon, Tasha Robinson assembled the film's scattered puzzle pieces to present a convincing scenario about one of the movie's more prominent (but still underutilized) characters, a video store owner named Leon (played by Moses Sumney).

"MaXXXine" is the third in a trilogy of films starring Mia Goth. In "X," one of the two characters Goth played was Maxine, an aspiring actor willing to make a porno to advance her career. The porno shoot takes place on a farm, but the production gives way to a string of killings propelled mostly by one of the property owners, Pearl (the second character played by Goth). A prequel called "Pearl" reveals that character's origin story; in her youth, Pearl, too, wished to be a film star, and she was willing to kill to succeed (Goth also plays the young Pearl).

In "MaXXXine," the title character (played by Goth once again) is the same final girl from "X," still pursuing movie stardom even as a serial killer stalks LA. Maxine lives above Leon's video store, and their shared passion for films seems to have made them close friends.

Noting that Leon appears early in the movie with a cast on his arm, Robinson proceeds to reason out what likely happened. Pointing out that Leon himself comments that he's not sexually interested in Maxine (unlike all the other men in the movie), the Polygon article posits that Leon is gay. The setting being the mid-1980s (a time of brutal hate crimes targeting gay men, thanks in part to the AIDS crisis), the article supposes that Leon has been the target of an assault – perhaps a hate crime, but maybe a hookup gone wrong. When Leon turns a customer away with the words "I don't do that any more," he might be referring to a recently ended career as a sex worker, the article speculates.

The article spoils significant plot points for "MaXXXine" in service of presenting its thesis, but in the end Robinson has engineered a credible theory for a subplot about Leon's gay double life (not to mention illustrating how cleverly West has used the film's setting, and the tropes of '80s slasher films, to reinforce what the film only implies).

Whether West intended only to imply that subplot, or whether it was made explicit in footage that was left on the cutting room floor, will have to remain a mystery for now... though one can always hope for a director's cut at some point down the road.