MAXXXINE
Theaters

It's 1985, and for adult entertainment sensation Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), it's now or never if she's going to become a full-fledged movie star. The porn actor knows she has the talent and the skills. Most of all, she knows she can overcome any obstacle. After all, she was the only one to escape alive from that Texas farm back in 1979 (at the end of X). If she could survive a pair of geriatric homicidal maniacs slicing, dicing, and impaling all her friends, she can certainly take on anything Hollywood has to throw at her.

Or so she thinks.

After hitting two clean out of the park in 2022 with the magnificent double bill of X and its prequel Pearl, writer-director Ti West and producer-star Goth reunite for MaXXXine, the pair's most narratively ambitious entry yet in their retro-horror franchise. Not only is it a celebration of filmmakers like Dario Argento and Brian De Palma, but the thriller also continues the duo's love affair with the cinematic creative process itself. Throw in nods to how Hollywood treats women (both in front of and behind the camera), religious fundamentalism, and society's puritanical double standards when it comes to sex, and it's safe to say a lot is going on.

Too much, in fact. Unlike the previous pictures, this time West's scenario bites off more than it can chew. Sections involving wisecracking police detectives (confidently portrayed by Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale) flirt at being interesting but seldom actually are. References to the real Night Stalker (Richard Ramirez, who murdered at least 14 people between April 1984 and August 1985) are inserted to set the mood, but they don't do much more than offer up a convenient red herring. The climactic villain reveal is far too obvious and also slightly half-baked, and as such has minimal impact.

What the sequel does have is the same ace in the hole as its predecessors: Goth. The actor is once again superb. This time around, while Maxine remains as determined as ever to achieve her goals, it's equally apparent she wasn't able to leave all the ghosts from her traumatic past in the truck's rearview mirror when she sped away from that Texas farmhouse and crushed a psychotic killer's head into mush six years ago.

Goth manages to find a chink in her character's armor but does so in a way that keeps the audience rooting for Maxine as she attempts to transition to "legit" roles, no matter how abhorrent her actions prove to be. This is a raw performance, one that isn't afraid to show Maxine's pain as it oozes out of every pore of her body. But her resilience is just as noteworthy, and the transition from one extreme to the other often happens in a single take. West refuses to cut away as Goth journeys through these dangerous emotional minefields, frequently conveying them through facial expressions and body movements alone.

The sequel is also aided by how it nails the look and feel of numerous L.A.-set sleaze thrillers, most notably the opening set piece of Joe Dante's 1981 classic The Howling, 1982's Vice Squad, and 1983's Angel. West comes so close to mirroring Angel that, during a sequence in a dirty, fenced-in alleyway, I almost expected to see the late, great Rory Calhoun to come walking around the corner in full Kit Carson regalia. Production designer Jason Kisvarday (Everything Everywhere All at Once) nails the dingy, neon-lit aesthetic with gusto, imbuing MaXXXine with a jolt of scruffy adrenaline that's intoxicating.

Another aspect that caught my attention? Elizabeth Debicki as horror filmmaker Elizabeth Bender. In a barnburner of a monologue — in which she explains to Maxine what she wants to do with her latest sure-to-be-future-cult-sensation and what she's had to sacrifice to keep working as a director in Hollywood — Debicki knocked my socks off. This aggressive burst of exposition is undeniably didactic, but that does not make every last word any less true (just ask Katt Shea, Barbara Peeters, Amy Holden Jones, or so many other female horror directors from the '80s). Debicki sells it with such fiercely carnal conviction I could almost see the indignant venom dripping from her lips as she spoke.

The plot echoes De Palma's Body Double as well as Argento's Tenebrae at various points. Yet West stays true to the course he and Goth charted with X, making sure Maxine remains at the center of the action. Basically, when Bender casts Maxine as the lead in her hotly anticipated horror sequel (a satanic possession yarn entitled The Puritan II, no less), private detective John Labat (Kevin Bacon, who, between MaXXXine and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, is cornering the market on slimy villains this weekend) shows up on Maxine's doorstep with knowledge of what went down in Texas. Soon afterward, many of those closest to Maxine start dying in increasingly gruesome fashion.

Other members of the colorful supporting cast include Giancarlo Esposito as Maxine's suitably smarmy lawyer/agent Teddy Night, Esq.; Lily Collins as the star of the first Puritan, whom Bender brings back for a bloody cameo in the sequel; and pop star Halsey as exotic dancer Tabby Martin (sporting a fabulously outlandish Jersey girl accent that would make the cast of Jersey Shore blush). Best of all is musician, composer, and filmmaker Moses Sumney as Maxine's deliciously Queer best friend and video store manager Leon. If Sumney's name isn't already familiar, it deserves to be after his brief but unforgettably smoldering performance here.

While there are hints throughout that things will twist in a preordained direction, it isn't until the climax that West appropriately reveals all of his cards. But he does so by resurrecting themes he's utilized on multiple occasions, including in two of his most popular shockers, The House of the Devil and The Sacrament. Sadly, this time around his piercing evisceration of theocratic dogmatism isn't nearly as razor-sharp as it has been in the past, and the entire finale only works as well as it does because of Goth's commitment to delivering violently personal retribution and not much else.

Even if MaXXXine doesn't work as well as X and Pearl did, West and Goth should still be commended. This trilogy has been a rhapsodic celebration of the horror genre from the silent era to the 1980s. In Maxine Minx and Pearl Douglas, it has delivered a pair of iconic characters who will live on forever. For Goth, the series has been a showstopping celebration of her massive, impossible-to-resist talents.
Through a combination of fortitude, moxie, guile, and ruthlessness, these films have slashed their way to immortality. All things considered, that's exactly as it should be.