Maxxxine (2024)
Directed by: Ti West
Premise: A sequel to 2022’s X. Set in 1985 Los Angeles, adult actress Maxine (Mia Goth) books a role in a mainstream horror film while the serial killer known as The Night Stalker kills women.
What Works: Maxxxine is the third film in this series following X and the prequel Pearl. Each film has a distinct look; X channeled 1970s pornography and early slasher films, namely The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, while Pearl paid homage to classic Hollywood Technicolor musicals but warped through a horror lens. Maxxxine channels Italian giallo films and 1980s VHS horror pictures. The filmmakers recreate the era quite well in the costumes and production design; everything looks lived in and organic. There is a lot of neon and electronic music and the film has the seedy qualities that distinguished many of the slasher films popular at that time. The filmmakers tie the media of the 1980s with the politics of that period, in particular the satanic panic and paranoia about the influence of violent media. The politics informs the turns in the drama and writer and director Ti West uses it in some smart and subversive ways. Compared to the other pictures in this series, Maxxxine gets a bit more nakedly self-reflexive; the director (Elizabeth Debicki) of the film-within-the-film speaks to the potential of the horror genre and the desire to exceed the audience’s low expectations and make art out of shlock. Together with X and Pearl, Maxxxine suggests a unity that cuts across genres and levels of show business.
What Doesn’t: Maxxxine is not nearly as scary or as tense as X or Pearl. X had an atmosphere of dread as it built up to the climax and clear stakes as the killer picked off victims one by one. The plotting of Maxxxine tends to be episodic in a way that is emotionally flat; the stakes don’t escalate even as people die. Maxxxine also lacks the depth of character seen in Pearl. The title characters of Maxxxine and Pearl have a similar objective—to be famous. That motivation played out more interestingly in Pearl and it is mostly incidental in Maxxxine. Most of the cast of Maxxxine are good but Kevin Bacon’s performance as a sinister private detective is overly broad and comes across cartoonish in a way that undermines the seriousness of the rest of the movie.
Bottom Line: Maxxxine succeeds in telling its own self-contained story and the film is entertaining. It certainly ranks third in this trilogy; its storytelling and characters are not as interesting as X or Pearl. But if this is the end of the series, Maxxxine does bring some of the themes to an interesting conclusion.
Episode: #1004 (July 14, 2024)