‘MaXXXine’: Review

Dir/scr: Ti West. US. 2024. 104mins

Hollywood can be brutal — a bitter truth exposed in MaXXXine, the third instalment in writer-director-editor Ti West’s recent horror trilogy. Mia Goth reprises her role as the hayseed porn star, first introduced in 2022’s X, who travels to Tinseltown to make her name as a legitimate film actress. But a relentless serial killer and show-business egos conspire to dash her dreams, each of them bloodthirsty in their own way. Despite some initial swagger, this 1980s-set picture lacks the ingenuity of the previous two chapters – a disappointment made worse by West’s wan attempts to satirise the film industry’s shallowness.

Lacks the ingenuity of the previous two chapters

A24 releases MaXXXine in the US on July 5 — Universal Pictures handles the UK rollout on the same day — and the sequel could be potent counterprogramming for viewers uninterested in the family-friendly Despicable Me 4, which opens in the US on July 3. Fans of 2022’s X and the even-better prequel Pearl,  which opened about six months later, will be intrigued, although the gore is not quite as prevalent this time around. That said, this chapter is the most star-studded, with Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale and Kevin Bacon among the newcomers to the series.

In 1985, porn actress Maxine (Goth, reprising the role from X) is living in Los Angeles and has just been cast in her first studio role for the horror sequel The Puritan II. It has only been a few years since the traumatic events of X, in which she was the lone survivor of a murderous rampage in Texas – an event she desperately wants to put behind her. But that repressed memory is unearthed once L.A. starts being terrorised by a killer known as The Night Stalker, who preys on women after hours. At the same time, Maxine is being pursued by a slimy private detective, John (Bacon), whose shadowy employer wants to expose her terrible past, which could threaten her film career.

X paid tribute to horror films of the 1970s, while the 1910s-set Pearl slyly referenced live-action Disney pictures, but MaXXXine is not as entertaining an homage to its cinematic influences. Cinematographer Eliot Rockett and production designer Jason Kisvarday provide West with an appropriately seedy and sun-soaked L.A., but the film fails to cleverly embody 1980s’ cinematic hallmarks, its Brian De Palma allusions fairly obvious. Still, those who enjoy period hits from ZZ Top and Kim Carnes will be happy to hear them blasting on the soundtrack.

West seems more invested in the political forces at work during the era, noting the rise of religious conservatism in America which led to the entertainment industry being accused of promoting godlessness, even Satanism. No surprise, then, that the name of the film that will be Maxine’s big break is willfully blasphemous — and that the mysterious killer brands his victims with a pentagram, the mark of the devil. Incorporating archive clips of Ronald Reagan, MaXXXine seeks to spotlight a period in which horror stood in defiance of the Moral Majority, a reactionary movement that sought to demonise art it found abhorrent.  

Unfortunately, that commentary is never especially insightful and, likewise, West has little success critiquing Hollywood (both the city and the industry) as a place that lures in aspiring performers only to exploit them. Maxine encounters cliched characters wherever she turns and, while some are meant to be parodies of specific types — such as Bacon’s no-good New Orleans detective — neither the script nor the performances contain enough wit to make the satire stick. Debicki plays a blandly intimidating film director, while Monaghan and Cannavale are one-note cops in search of the killer. (The meagre running joke about Cannavale’s character is that he wanted to be an actor, delivering every line with extra gravitas as a way to hold onto his thwarted aspirations.) Even worse, the film’s expected gross-out violence is subpar, rarely offering the liberating rebuke to the era’s uptight handwringing.

Goth continues to be a hypnotically unsettling presence. But one of the reasons why Pearl is the franchise’s strongest entry is that by playing Pearl — the younger version of X’s evil elderly woman — she tapped into something truly chilling in her portrait of a wannabe actor bedevilled by mental-health issues. Her performance in MaXXXine doesn’t have the same spark. Maxine may be a tough-talking gal you do not want to cross — especially if you’re a criminal who mistakenly assumes she’s a damsel in distress — but her adventures in Hollywood’s twisted wonderland are underwhelming. And the reveal of who is behind the murders is anticlimactic, another strained attempt on West’s part to inject a little social relevance. No matter the triple-X titillation promised by its title, MaXXXine is fairly unarousing.