'MaXXXine' review: Mia Goth and Ti West return with a bloody film noir
With MaXXXine, the latest in their X trilogy, Ti West and Mia Goth are charting a curious course as horror's most fascinating new duo.
It was little more than two years ago that the writer/director and actress/producer unleashed the ultra-violent slasher X upon a giddy SXSW audience prior to a successful theatrical release. Then, just four months later, they unveiled the prequel Pearl, which not only unfurled the tormented origin story of the first film's villain, but also offered a tone so wildly different that it left critics and audiences dizzy with deranged delight. Where X was dripping with lurid sex, vicious shame, and a mean sense of humor plumbed from Tobe Hooper's seminal 1974 slasher, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Pearl was a campy ode to winsome Technicolor children's movies like The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins, but with a dark undercurrent that reflected the devilish potential behind its titular antiheroine's wide-eyed ambition.
The two films formed a festered fairy tale, where the princess of one becomes the wicked queen of the other. So what does all this mean for MaXXXine, the sequel that follows X's sole survivor to 1985 Los Angeles? Like its predecessors, it's rooted in a tale of sex and murder. But this time West's influences lean into the film-noir classics set in L.A., like Roman Polanski's iconic 1974 hit, Chinatown. The result is a film that starts off familiar but strong, tapping into the seedy pleasures of peep shows and surreal realities of studio backlots. But something gets lost as West and Goth hurtle toward a climax that feels undeserving of the movie that leads up to it.
What's MaXXXine about?
Set six years after X, MaXXXine l finds its titular sex worker, Maxine Minx, a successful porn star hoping to make the leap to legit moviemaking in Hollywood. Convinced the sequel to a popular, gory horror movie called The Puritan is her ticket to the big time, she throws her all into the audition. But getting the part won't be nearly as difficult as surviving the leather-gloved stalker who's been picking off her friends one by one.
A Final Girl in full, Maxine is not one to be easily scared. Not by the sneering ego of her director (Elizabeth Debicki), the intimidation tactics of a pair of LAPD detectives (Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale), or a Southern-twanged private eye (Kevin Bacon), whose white suit, wide-brimmed hat, and busted nose make for the movie's most explicit Chinatown reference. But when these murder investigations threaten her fledgling career, Maxine is determined to face off against the mystery killer, with a dark glare and her mantra: "I will not accept a life I do not deserve."
Mia Goth is once again great under West's direction.
The baby-voiced British actress has worked with an array of acclaimed filmmakers, including Lars Von Trier (Nymphomaniac), Gore Verbinski (A Cure for Wellness), and Luca Guadignino (Suspiria). Yet it might well be West who has best showcased the doll-faced actress, giving her much more to play than the tragic while beautiful gamine.
With X, she pulled double duty, portraying the uninhibited and ambitious Maxine as well as the desperately horny (to the point of homicidal rage) Pearl. With Pearl, she threw herself into a parody of an ingenue tale, giving a performance as jarring and enchanting as it was hysterically vulnerable. With MaXXXine, she locks away the insecurities of Pearl, leaning into Maxine's borderline dangerous delusions of grandeur. Witnessing Maxine swaggering onto a studio lot and trash-talking her competition without breaking stride, her unchecked confidence gives a thrill. But as the film lurches into its final act, Maxine threatens to become more clichéd than compelling.
MaXXXine is at its best when it's a showbiz satire.
West and Goth are wickedly clever in how they depict Hollywood here. On one front, the film-within-the-film The Puritan II looks destined to be gory, goofy trash. Yet its director — with a lofty English accent — speaks of it like it will rival The Godfather. In the audition for the role of a possessed 1950s housewife, it's not enough for Maxine to cry on cue. She's also expected to bare her breasts, and she does so matter-of-factly, as if being asked to hand over her headshot.
Such shrugging absurdity comes to a head in a chase sequence through the actual Universal Studios back lot. Here, Bacon's dick chases Goth's starlet from the Old West sets, through a false Manhattan, and up to the stairs of the Bates Motel. It's a knowingly silly sequence that draws attention to the facades of Hollywood and fame, while also showing how mastering the landscape of such agreed-upon lies can help one survive — and even thrive — in Hollywood. It's a point that West drives home with the film's finale. But getting there is a bloody battle.
MaXXXine loses the courage of its convictions with a frustratingly unsatisfying climax.
For much of MaXXXine, I was on the edge of my seat, a big goofy grin on my face. West and Goth were chiseling out a film-noir story of a femme fatale who, having survived one attempt on her life, is determined to let no one get the better of her now that she's closer to her dream than ever before. There's a horrid determination in Maxine, who will not be slowed down by the bodies stacking up on the morgue, her grief, or the slaughterhouse secrets she ran from in Texas. To her, Los Angeles is a place of heat and promise. West paints his setting accordingly, framing Maxine as a goddess, tall and untouchable among the squalid backdrops and the blaring evening news reports of the (real) serial killer known as the Night Stalker.
While outwardly, Maxine can be stoic in the face of death and condemnation, the movie quivers with the energy of an animal running for its very life. Neon lights, leather pants, spurts of blood, and snorts of cocaine piece together an atmosphere so thick you can practically smell the sweat and hairspray. And Goth's supporting cast — which also boasts enthralling turns from Giancarlo Esposito, Moses Sumney, and Halsey — fleshes out this world with attitude, moxie, sneers, and screams.
But when it comes time to pull back the curtain and reveal the real villain, screenwriter West makes the least interesting — indeed downright predictable — choice. A big, splashy sequence in the Hollywood Hills has action, graphic violence, and plenty of dramatic pronouncements. But after all the possibilities set up in its noir plot, the clunky conclusion feels out of place with the intoxicating satire that led to it. Instead of following the noir-inspiration points to a justly cold and harrowing end (think Sunset Boulevard), MaXXXine seems to abruptly remember its slasher sequel and thus piles on fresh lore, tiresome monologuing, and the requisite higher body count expected as a franchise expands.
It's a shame. Vibrant in sleaze, satire, and shocking violence, MaXXXine was on the brink of being the best West and Goth have made yet. But a bungled ending leaves a sour taste.