Mia Goth has reprised her widely beloved role of Maxine Minx in MaXXXine, the third instalment of Ti West‘s X film series, previously comprised of 2022’s X and its prequel Pearl. Modern scream queen Goth is joined by an impressive cast, including Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, and Kevin Bacon.
Such a roster of actors and musicians proves the kind of reputation West has earned in recent years and shows the increasing calibre of entertainment figures wanting to work with him. The real question, though, is whether the films themselves stand up to those performing in them. Three movies into his 2020s era, West has largely been revealed as a director who knows how to make a horror films look fun and flashy even if they lack originality.
MaXXXine takes place six years after the events of X as Goth’s character has left behind the “Texas porn star massacre” of the first movie to find her fame and fortune in Hollywood. Initially making her way as an adult entertainment actor, Maxine eventually finds herself making a ‘proper’ film; well, at least a dodgy horror B-movie by the name of ‘The Puritan II’, directed by Elizabeth Debicki’s domineering filmmaker, Elizabeth Bender.
At the same time, 1985 Los Angeles is suffering the crimes of notorious serial killer Richard Ramirez, dubbed in the media the ‘Night Stalker’, who appears to be targeting Maxine’s stripper and porn star buddies as his victims. MaXXXine’s Hollywood is generously doused in all the nostalgic expectations of the most excessive decade of the 20th century with neon lights on every corner, shitty horror movie rental stores (including one owned by Moses Sumney’s Leon) and a groovy soundtrack comprised of ZZ Top and, of course, Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes’.
Narratively and aesthetically somewhat typical, then, but where MaXXXine excels the most is in its many moments of self-aware homage. At one point, our hero Maxine is chased to the Bates Motel (from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho) on the Universal studio lot by Kevin Bacon’s seedy private eye John Labat, while a later moment sees Lily Collins’ dodgy-accented Molly Bennett have her mouth splattered with blood by Bender in a scene likely paying respect to Andrzej Zulawski’s horror classic Possession and its iconic Isabelle Adjani performance.
In addition, West seems to have fun positing the notion that horror movies in the latter part of the 1980s were deemed B at best, toying with the idea that they could never be taken seriously. Judging from the popularity of his X series, though, such a belief has been proven wrong ten times over. Still, there are a handful of issues with MaXXXine, as well as with the films that preceded it, that prevent admittance to the canon of horror greatness.
One of the film’s most engaging and genuinely exciting moments is when Maxine’s past finally catches up with her, and a motive for the entire series, which had been starkly missing (whether supernatural, religious or just downright maniacal), is finally revealed. However, by the time this antagonism finally arrives, one can’t help but feel that it’s somewhat too late and that West has only managed to deliver a pastiche of the horror world’s past with a 1980s gloss rather than provide an effort of originality or even one that genuinely feels scary.
Sure, there are some brilliantly gory set pieces, including the splattering of a man in a car crusher and the decimation of an even more unfortunate gentleman’s genitals (let’s not forget that the X series is undoubtedly feminist in tone). Still, such standout moments do not guarantee a good horror movie and West’s most recent entry seems to suffer from a lack of an overall haunting spectre or suchlike. MaXXXine is exciting, flashy, funny, sassy, self-aware and incredibly sexy, but it fails to be anything more than the sum of its parts: a neon-lit homage to the horrible history of Hollywood horror rather than a fear-inducing glimpse into the genre’s future.