MaXXXine [Review]
Ti West’s giallo horror thriller is the best film in his X trilogy.
Mia Goth. Credit: Justin Lubin / A24
MaXXXine is the third film in writer-director Ti West’s X cycle, following X and Pearl. While X was set in 1979, MaXXXine picks up six years later, in 1985. The film is dripping with giallo influence, but it’s more than just an exercise in style.
The film opens with a news footage montage that drops us into 1985, the height of the Reagan era, highlighting events such as the infamous PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) Senate hearing. Bits of testimony from Tipper Gore and Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider regarding the “obscene” nature of modern music, as exemplified by the PMRC’s “Filthy Fifteen” list, as well as clips and news headlines reflecting the Satanic Panic, provide context for the moral protest and turbulence of the era. Immediately after, we see Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) audition for a role in a horror film, part of her plan to break out from pornography into Hollywood, two things that the Moral Majority would have seen as one and the same.
Mia Goth. Credit: Justin Lubin / A24
We met Maxine in Ti West’s slasher X, set in 1979, where she’s the only survivor of an ill fated porn production. Now, she’s a porn star at the height of her powers in Los Angeles, but she wants more. Tough as nails British director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) gives Maxine the part, the lead role in film-within-the-film Puritan II, a horror movie sequel. The two women are kindred spirits in that they both want more. This is a time when women in Hollywood don’t have much influence, and Bender is determined to be a power player and show the world her art, that her horror film isn’t a trashy sequel but rather a “B movie with A ideas”—perhaps a not so subtle mission statement for Ti West.
Meanwhile, people Maxine cares about are turning up dead, murdered by a mysterious killer with an MO similar to contemporary LA serial killer the Night Stalker. Sleazy Louisiana P.I. John Labat (Kevin Bacon) is threatening to out Maxine’s involvement in the 1979 porn star murders. Maxine must confront the killer to save her future Hollywood career and her life.
Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki. Credit: Justin Lubin / A24
MaXXXine is a giallo psychosexual thriller through and through, and I loved this about it. The film has a bright color palette, with colorfully lit nighttime scenes such as a memorable one featuring a Buster Keaton impersonator set in an alley saturated in red. Until the mysterious killer is finally revealed, we see him represented by his clenching hands clad in tight black leather gloves, his black coat, and his fedora, like the killer in Mario Bava’s classic Blood and Black Lace. Deaths often occur on-screen in gruesome detail, with copious amounts of splattering blood and gore. The screen is filled with the killer’s gloved hand, bringing a knife down again and again into his victim. Suffice it to say, MaXXXine is not a film for the squeamish.
While Mia Goth is excellent and MaXXXine is a showcase for her, my favorite performances came from the supporting cast. Kevin Bacon chews the scenery as an almost cartoonish detective in a fantastically entertaining performance. Giancarlo Esposito appears in an amazing wig as Maxine’s agent-lawyer, Teddy Knight, playing one of the film’s true heroes; he makes an impression despite only appearing in three scenes. Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale play a pair of LAPD homocide detectives, Williams and Torres.
Kevin Bacon. Credit: Justin Lubin / A24
MaXXXine is a movie about filmmaking, but most importantly about performance and artifice. When Cannavale’s Torres interacts with Maxine, he delivers a cliched, tough guy cop monologue. Chastised by his partner Williams when his tact isn’t working, he immediately stops this performance and confesses that he wanted to be an actor and not a detective. This doesn’t stop him from trying again later, as he seems to be more comfortable putting on an act.
In her first scene, when Maxine auditions, she delivers a raw, convincingly tearful monologue—and then just turns the emotion off. We see something similar play out in the film’s climax with the killer. Everything is a performance. In a scene that takes place on the Universal Studios lot, director Bender comments how how remarkable it is that all the convincing buildings of the sets are really facades with empty shells, something we see confirmed in one of the film’s best sequences later on.
Mia Goth. Credit: Justin Lubin / A24
When we see the Hollywood sign from up close, it loses its mystique; it’s just made up of flimsy, painted letters propped up by planks of wood. Even so, like a movie set, most people will never see it from that angle or proximity, so the magical illusion is maintained. MaXXXine is full of characters that want to be part of that illusion and perpetuate it, people that want to be bigger than their own realities and have people believe it.
I don’t think we can call MaXXXine a B movie, but it will play that way to the majority of the public and later to awards season voters. There’s certainly a lot more there than that.
MaXXXine is in theaters now.
