After the sleeper success of A24's slasher horror movie X and the surprise prequel Pearl (both reviewed here) it was announced Ti West's trilogy would conclude with MaXXXine with the sole survivor of X (spoiler alert!), Maxine Minx, trying to move beyond porn into "legitimate" movies in 1985 Hollywood. How did she do? Let's find out.
Mia Goth returns as Maxine. It's six years after the Texas Porn Massacre and at age 33 her porn career is nearing its end. She auditions for a horror sequel, The Puritan II, directed by statuesque female director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki), and gets the part. She's being tailed by a shadowy figure who watches her when she does her shift in a peep show and there's a creepy private investigator, Labat (Kevin Bacon, having a ball), menacing her on the shadows behalf.
And lurking farther around the edges is the Night Stalker, the infamous serial killer who murdered at least 14 people between 1984-85, and may be responsible for Maxine's sex worker friends turning up dead with Satanic symbols branded into them. A pair of police detectives (Bobby Cannavale & Michelle Monaghan) think she's somehow connected to the crimes and are harassing her leading to a preposterous finale.
While X and Pearl had their gimmicky charms, I was bored by MaXXXine. Not even the Gen X-baiting Eighties throwback vibe could make an empty story interesting. Ignoring that there were extremely few female horror directors (or even female directors in general) at the time, Bender doesn't really add much to the plot than digressions about being driven to succeed and creative vision. Perhaps this aspect could've been fleshed out more, but West doesn't try.
The ultimate reveal of the villain was only a surprise to those who weren't paying attention to the very end of X or the opening scene of MaXXXine. Western Union couldn't have telegraphed the "surprise" harder. Every character is basically a cutout stereotype which even good actors like Giancarlo Esposito, who plays Maxine's agent/lawyer like an ambulance chaser, can do much with. And the ending where people are suddenly armed when they would've had no reason to be and what Maxine does yet walks free were disbelief suspensions too far.
Goth is an odd actress. With her odd invisible eyebrows, she's not a standard beauty - she'd be great as Hazel O'Connor in a biopic that exactly seven people would probably see - and she's most worked in the left-of-the-dial art film scene in movies like Infinity Pool, Nymphomaniac, and the Suspira remake. But in her second swing as Maxine, the character seems thinner & more mannered, drifting at times towards Elizabeth Berkeley's Nomi from Showgirls in 'tude. Goth co-wrote Pearl with West, so why not team up again?
If you saw the first two movies of West's trilogy it's understandable that you'd want to see how it finishes up. Perhaps if you lower your expectation sufficiently, the disappointment may not be too bad, but it's overall a skip.
With a period look gritty film look, the 4K presentation doesn't really offer much visual ooompf as far as highlights and shadow detail. I didn't really feel 4K and the audio mix was nothing special.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
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