MaXXXine (2024)

Score: 4 / 5

The third part in Ti West's radical slasher "X" series has finally arrived! No one was ready for A24 to so fully embrace slashers when they did with gusto in 2022. West had a unique, uncompromising vision. A sort of American Horror Story anthology approach to the horror subgenre -- X proudly paying its respects to '70s exploitative slashers and Pearl offering a bloodstained version of '40s-era Technicolor -- these films' aesthetics only enhance their otherwise complex themes of art imitating life (or vice versa) and the ways film impacts the lived experiences and desperate dreams of average Americans in times of social and artistic anxiety. MaXXXine furthers these themes while emphasizing the inversion of that: to what lengths will a young wannabe starlet go to truly live in the movies she so loves?

Enter Mia Goth once again as the titular Maxine Minx, the sole survivor of the events at Pearl's farm in 1979. Now, six years later, she's made it into Hollywood, though her career of pornography is no longer fulfilling her goals. She auditions for an exploitation horror film, The Puritan II, winning the part and thrilled at the opportunities it presents. Unfortunately, several other young folks (mostly women) are being hunted in the city of angels, and while we know Maxine isn't the killer, a couple detectives (Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan) are keeping a close watch on her. After all, the Night Stalker is active, and details of his gory crimes have all but petrified the city with fear; his murders have, however, mobilized the religious right, loudly criticizing movies and music for corrupting youth with Satanic ideas. 

West lovingly allows these elements to simmer in a hazy ambiance, stoking the atmosphere into a heady cocktail of garish neon lights, shadowy liaisons, and the sort of dusty grime that comes with dry desert heat. While he mostly avoids too much lurid display, he gets the sound and feel of the era exactly right, and a droning synth score feels transportive in the best way. Too many films and series lately have done "the most" regarding nostalgic, materialistic trappings of the '80s, and this smartly and beautifully sidesteps those pitfalls. And the endless film references make for so much cinephile discussion fodder that I actually ran out of space on my notepaper during the screening. These are films for horror fans who also love movie history, and West is offering boons for those willing to get on his level.

Additional new players make for a really lovely context, including Maxine's icy, commanding film director (Elizabeth Debicki) who knows the screenplay is trash but is determined to elevate it, and a threatening private eye (Kevin Bacon with a deliciously weird New Orleans drawl) who knows too much about her sordid past. These powerful new characters open up the "X" world in wonderfully inventive and entertaining ways. They also, arguably, limit Maxine's agency in the movie that bears her own name. Rather than taking charge of herself and her fate -- as Goth so muscularly did in the previous two films -- here, she tends to be more reactive to the big threats in her orbit. Perhaps that's an intentional way to remind us that with bigger fame come bigger restraints; where better to critique issues of celebrity and paparazzi than literally beneath the Hollywood hills?

But the exploitation that returns to her life with a vengeance is the real star of this film, not its final girl. "Hollywood is a killer" reads the film's tagline, and that's about the long and short of it. An artistically challenging and narratively satisfying way to potentially end the series, MaXXXine succeeded for me even as it made me hope for more installments. Goth has made quite an icon of herself, involved as so much more than actor in these movies, and West has finally broken into mainstream cinema in a big way. If criticisms of gimmickry or contrivances are to be leveled at this film, I'd hope they are couched in considerations of how to suitably conclude such a wide-ranging, intangibly themed franchise without some forced writing and heavy-handed direction. But sometimes the material also calls for that, and I'm eager to dive into this seedy glamor all over again.