‘MaXXXine’ Review: Ti West And Mia Goth’s Horror Trilogy Comes To A Satisfyingly Bloody Conclusion
Mia Goth and Halsey in 'MaXXXine' A24
Ti West’s decades-spanning horror trilogy, which began in the late ’70s with X (2022) and then jumped back over half a century for the same year’s WW1 prequel Pearl, now fast-forwards to the mid-’80s with a capper that requires a little more thought than its gory, crowd-pleasing predecessors. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Reagan years would be West’s safe space, given 2009’s pitch-perfect period piece The House of The Devil (which covers similar ground, thematically), but MaXXXine pulls back on that kind of detail in a way that’s surprising. Despite the obvious genre set-up, which promises way more violence than you’d expect, but is pretty gory when you do get it — West’s film is actually an abstract think-piece about women in cinema, predicated on Bette Davis’s quote: “In this business, until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star.”
Related Stories
Mia Goth Addresses 'Blade' Delays: "They Want To Make A Great Movie" - 'MaXXXine' Premiere
Sony Pictures Classics Acquires Richard Linklater's 'Blue Moon'; Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale & Andrew Scott Set To Star
It begins in 1959 with a black-and-white home movie of a young girl dancing. “That’s my little girl,” says a fatherly voice offscreen. She’s certainly ambitious. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” she tells him cheerfully and emphatically. “I will not accept a life I do not deserve!” The girl is the young MaXXXine Minx (Mia Goth), and, though the film doesn’t expressly spell it out for a while, prior to the shocking events of X — “The Texas Porn-Shoot Massacre,” as the tabloid headlines later put it — it seems MaXXXine is already scarred from a straitlaced upbringing with an overbearing, ultra-religious father (the sinister Simon Prast).
Cut to 1985, and MaXXXine is now in Hollywood and testing for a horror sequel, The Puritan II. Her audition is part genius, part car crash. Giving her age as 33, she aces it with a creepily compelling performance reminiscent of Naomi Watts’s showstopper scene in Mulholland Drive. “I’ve seen the devil,” she intones, “stalking me like a specter from my past.” Despite MaXXXine’s background in porn — which is still her day job — and almost ridiculous self-confidence (“I’ve always had a larger vision for myself”), the film’s director, Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) is impressed. Sensing this victory, MaXXXine strides out into the parking lot, where a line of identikit girls who could well be her are waiting. “Y’all might as well go home now, cos I f*cking nailed that,” she yells, and ZZ Top’s rollicking “Give Me All Your Lovin’” kicks off the movie proper.
This credit sequence covers a lot of ground, which is where MaXXXine differs from its predecessors. Advertising its time rather than evoking it, West’s film spells out what was going on in the mid-’80s: Serial killer Richard Ramirez (AKA The Nightstalker) was on the loose in California, and Al Gore’s wife Tipper was on a mission to clean up rock and rap music after overhearing her 11-year-old daughter listening to Prince’s sexually explicit “Darling Nikki”. Such morally uptight clean-up protestors will never be far from the action from here on in; as Bender explains, “Angry people are so easy to lead.”
The Nightstalker is uppermost on everyone’s minds, however, when the mutilated bodies of sex workers start turning up, branded with satanic symbols. Two of them are MaXXXine’s friends, which brings her to the attention of a couple of LA cops (the inspired and charismatic pairing of Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale). MaXXXine refuses to cooperate, being more unnerved by the sleazy private eye John Labat (Kevin Bacon), who knows her real name and — more importantly — seems to hold the key to the real killer’s identity.
And now a public service announcement for the genre-savvy: know upfront that the trailer is something of a bum steer; Brian De Palma’s twisty erotic thrillers simply inform the mood, and you won’t get very far trying to guess who the teasingly little-seen killer is simply from their androgynous black get-up. In the same way, it’s really not an homage to Italian giallo; with the exception of one very bloody set-piece, this isn’t a murder-mystery in the usual sense.
In fact, the reveal is really quite disappointing after the hell-for-leather lead-up of X and Pearl, both of which freely experimented with storytelling techniques and film grammar to sell the sizzle as well as the steak. Surprisingly, despite an obvious nod to the Mitchell brothers’ 1972 porno-chic breakout Behind the Green Door, West is very traditional this time round, literally romping through the Universal studio lot in a journey that will take MaXXXine to the Psycho house and, well… is that really the Back to the Future town square set?
These incremental moments build up, because — and this may be complete conjecture — West doesn’t seem to be that interested in wrapping up his trilogy with yet another pastiche horror movie. Sometimes clumsily but more often not, MaXXXine has things to say about the objectification and humiliation of women in Hollywood, as actors and directors, and, alongside that, the belittling of horror as a genre too. As the figurehead for this, Debicki is a little on the nose with her delivery, demanding perfection while not exactly exuding passion, but it’s hard not to see where she’s coming from when she gives MaXXXine an on-set pep talk, insisting, “We’ll prove them all wrong together in a beautiful f*cking bloodbath.”
Title: MaXXXine
Director/screenwriter: Ti West
Cast: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Kevin Bacon, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale
Rating: R
Distributor: A24
Running time: 1 hr 43 min