MaXXXine (2024)

Ti West | 1hr 44min

Having rolled in the mud of 70s indie horror in X and the probed the underlying darkness of classical Hollywood in Pearl, Ti West suffuses the final part of his trilogy with sensationalist glamour, only barely masking the cutthroat violence of 1980s America. Here, the Satanic panic is rife among conservative Christians who believe the Devil has possessed their youth through modern entertainment, while those who lust for the lifestyle of the rich and famous delight in its hedonistic, consumerist culture. Stoking the flames of this division further are reports of the mysterious Night Stalker, who has infamously been targeting the young people of Los Angeles and branding their faces with occult symbols. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that so many of them have ties to B-grade porn star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx, though the police detectives who are on the case certainly don’t see it that way.

MaXXXine may be West’s take on the 80s slasher movie, but his cinematic homage also transcends that era of cheap kills and thrills. Vibrant lighting, black leather gloves, and the stretched mask worn by the Night Stalker directly call back to Italian Giallo films, while Psycho is held up as a paragon of horror filmmaking by industry professionals, worshipping Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy on their visits to Universal’s Bates Motel set.

The emulation of Brian de Palma’s pulpy, extravagant style from films like Dressed to Kill and Body Double shouldn’t come as surprise then either, given his own reverent adoration of the Master of Suspense. Split screen montages set the scene of Hollywood’s nightlife, teeming with costumed street performers, prostitutes, and vivid neon lights, while wipe transitions between scenes playfully indulge in the dynamic artifice. West’s editing is even sharper in scenes of mounting tension, cross-cutting between Maxine reviewing the screenplay for her debut horror movie and her friend’s brutal murder at the hands of the Night Stalker, while cutaways to gory practical effects revel in his visceral, grotesque torture.

Much like X and Pearl, the relationship between moviemaking and celebrity culture is at the core of MaXXXine, once again granting West the freedom to explore the American Dream through a satirical, metafictional lens. Mia Goth returns as the vessel through which this merciless ambition manifests as well, picking up Maxine’s story five years after her escape from Pearl’s bloody massacre in X, and now standing on the verge of stardom as she prepares for her debut screen performance in slasher sequel The Puritan II.

It is no coincidence that director’s goal of making a “B-movie with A-movie ideas” is also a self-comment on MaXXXine, nor that her description of the lead character as “a killer but not a villain” could just easily apply to Maxine herself. Though the young actress has been deeply traumatised, she is well-equipped to deal with all sorts of danger, as she proves in one violent confrontation with a Buster Keaton street performer in a murky alleyway. On some subconscious level, there is truth to the lurid narratives that the storytellers of Hollywood deliver to their audiences. Desensitised, self-serving cruelty is the only way to get ahead in this industry after all, sacrificing pieces of one’s humanity to stay in the game and beat the equally ruthless competition.

Goth’s acting here is anything but weak, but it is no coincidence that her best performances in this trilogy have been as the older and younger versions of Pearl, embodying a tragic derangement that is a little more diluted in Maxine. The hallucinatory presence of Pearl here only really serves to carry through the series’ formal comparison of their stories – one being of crushed dreams, and the other of dreams coming true at enormous cost – yet this is one of many narrative threads that fail to find its resolution in a messy final act.

By spending so much time on disconnected subplots, West doesn’t entirely earn his eventual subversion of the film’s Satanic horror, which he may have pulled off with greater setup. In true Hitchcockian fashion, his staging of the film’s climax beneath the Hollywood Sign stains an iconic landmark with seedy, bloody corruption, but even here the opportunity to end the story on a relatively strong note is missed with an unnecessary epilogue. Unlike X and Pearl, MaXXXine spreads itself a little too thinly across a large ensemble, setting, and narrative, yet there is nevertheless something amusingly ironic about a film that ambitiously falls prey to the same shortcomings as many of its influences. In spite of these missteps, West adeptly puts his own spin on the pulp and splatter of 80s horror, ending his three-part interrogation of the genre’s bloodstained history with intoxicating, gaudy spectacle.

MaXXXine is currently playing in cinemas.