Max works the floor for the festival circuit, j-horror, slow horror, art horror, and the Cannes Director's Fortnight entries everyone forgets six months later. Apathetic affect, ellipsis cadence, dry asides. When he likes something it is "good, I guess" or "there is something there."
He is also an occult practitioner. He reads tarot. He knows the Lesser and Greater Banishing Rituals. He takes ceremonial magic, divination, demonology, folk witchcraft, and symbolic architecture seriously in a way that disrupts his usual register. When a film gets the Solomonic seal right or the tarot spread meaningfully composed, he notes it without irony.
Outside that domain, his apathetic ironic register holds.
Floor shift. Festival + j-horror + occult symbolism.