Illustration by Michel DiMilo
A Star is Reborn: Film Review of MaXXXine
By Geoff Carter
★★★1/2
While MaXXXine, the third and final installment of Ti West’s X Film Series, revisits some characters and situations from X and Pearl, the first chapters of the series, it takes us down a different—and deeper—rabbit hole than its predecessors. Instead of providing a straight horror/slasher narrative, MaXXXine is a mash-up of a police drama, a serial killer crime saga, and a very dark comedy.
The story begins about fifteen years after the end of X. Southern California is being terrorized by the Hillside Strangler. Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) is a famous adult film star who is still (after years of trying) to break into the big time. She auditions for a role in the horror sequel Puritan II , and then her agent Teddy Night (Giancarlo Esposito) phones her to let her know she landed it.
Tabby (Halsey), one of her colleagues, invites her to a party at a ritzy mansion just under the Hollywood sign. Maxine declines. On her way home, she is confronted by a man with a knife who is oddly—and shockingly—made up like Buster Keaton. Maxine pulls a gun and makes quick work of Buster.
Tabby and Amber (Chloe Farnworth), another co-worker are found dead the next morning. Detectives Williams (Michele Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale) question Maxine about her dead friends. She declines to answer. In the meantime, a videocassette is delivered to her door, containing film of a Texas murder (X) she had been involved in years ago. She asks her friend Leon (Moses Sumney) to check out the tape. In the meantime, she receives an invite to meet private detective John LaBat (Kevin Bacon) who tells her that the Texas crimes will come to light unless she meets with his employer who provided the tape. Maxine tells Teddy about the threat, and he agrees to help her.
Maxine first ignores Labat, but after Leon is savagely murdered and she has a violent encounter with the private investigator, Maxine eventually (after a couple of violent encounters and a lengthy chase through the Universal Studios movie lot that culminates at the Bates Motel), tricks Labat and, with her agent Teddy, dispatches him.
Meanwhile, on the set of Puritan II, Maxine meets Molly (Lily Collins), the star of the original Puritan, who invites her to a party very similar to the one Tabby told her about. Maxine decides to visit the address given her by Labat and soon discovers the truth behind the man persecuting her.
MaXXXine is a horror movie, a detective flick, and a homage to Hollywood. It is at times excruciatingly violent and bloody, but, like the first two films in the series, maintains a blackly comic tone. Missing from this film, however, is the empathy shown for the main characters, both the lovelorn aged Pearl in X (also played by Goth) and the desperate and hopelessly dreamy young Pearl—in Pearl—achieved despite the fact that she is a stone-cold killer.
In the series, West has paid homage to horror classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, slasher movies, and—in MaXXXine—giallo films. In MaXXXine, however, the tributes are almost campily over the top. The Buster Keaton stalker, complete with whitened make-up, classic outfit, and the signature hat, is more (and less) than a tribute. It is bizarrely presented tongue-in-cheek perversion. At another point in the film, Maxine grinds out a cigarette on the Hollywood Star of Theda Bara. The alligator back on Pearl’s farm who feasted on her victims was named Theda—after the actress.
The chase scene where Labat is trying to capture Maxine crosses from Wall Street to Western Street to the Bates Motel and finally to the Bates House—where Maxine barricades herself. Much of the chase takes place behind the building facades, revealing only bare two-by-fours and unfinished structures. It’s as if West is showing us the reality behind the films—the man behind the curtain as it were. When Maxine enters the Bates house and stands in front of the bare bones of the house, it is almost as spooky as the original house, implying the reality behind the fantasy is as gnarly as it gets.
This film, like the first two, is chronically—perhaps obsessively—self-referential. Not only does Ti West give a fond nod to horror classics, he also incorporates many of the common tropes of the genre into his work. His genius is that while these tropes are hardly unexpected, he makes them seem new and fresh.
In the series, but particularly in this film, his characters reflect stereotypical elements found in many horror—and cop—movies. Particularly entertaining is Kevin Bacon’s Labat, who is sort of a cross between Harry Dean Stanton’s Johnnie Farragut in Wild at Heart and M. Emmet Walsh’s Loren Visser in Blood Simple. He is acerbic, nasty, and spins a sugary Southern drawl like a scurvy little spider. Bacon’s performance borders on the edge of camp but always stays on the side of believability.
Cannavale and Monaghan’s bickering detectives seem as if they could have come straight out of Seven or Law and Order. Esposito’s Teddy Night is a fast-talking no-nonsense agent and Sumner’s Leon are standard good buddy characters for Goth’s Maxine, who seems strangely subdued in this incarnation.
All in all, MaXXXine is a good suspense movie; a great horror movie; a good procedural movie; and a wonderful homage to the movie industry itself.
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