MaXXXine writer-director Ti West has told RTÉ Entertainment what he thinks present-day films and TV shows often get wrong in their depiction of the Eighties - and what he was determined to do right.
A mix of slasher horror, LA Confidential, and the George C Scott-starring cult classic Hardcore, MaXXXine is a wild rollercoaster through 1980s Los Angeles, closing out the Mia Goth-powered trilogy that began with X and continued with Pearl in characteristically savage style.
Set in 1985, MaXXXine finds adult star Maxine Minx (Goth) on the cusp of her big Hollywood break - but "the past ain't finished" with the fan-favourite anti-hero.
With a bigger canvas and an A-list ensemble in support - including Kevin Bacon, Lily Collins, and Elizabeth Debicki - filmmaker West brilliantly recreates the era from opening to closing credits, avoiding the pitfall at the centre of Eighties-set stories.
"I think sometimes films struggle when recreating a period as specific as the Eighties with making (putting) too many things that were popular at the exact moment that the movie takes place at the forefront of the movie," he explained to RTÉ Entertainment.
"Whereas if you actually were alive in 1985, and you were walking down the street in July, not everything on the street is from July of 1985! The cars are from multiple years earlier - sometimes decades earlier - the furniture the same, the advertisements are older, they're not all brand-new.
"I think that's a big part of MaXXXine is that it feels lived-in. It feels like a believable version of the Eighties. There are moments that are heightened, but for the most part it's a more authentic representation of the time period than sometimes things are.
"So, I think that's something that films and TV shows get in trouble with sometimes is they overemphasise the popularity of whatever was happening at that exact moment."
West concluded that his goal with MaXXXine was to bring viewers "into a Hollywood story from a different perspective".
"There's almost a genre of movies where LA plays itself and LA is a major character of it," he said.
"I hadn't seen this particular story that kind of shows Hollywood, the glamour side of Hollywood, the sleazy side of Hollywood, and to show the absurdity and the facade nature of Hollywood in the way this movie does. That was really what felt fresh to me."
MaXXXine is in cinemas from Friday 5 July.
