Maxxxine (2024 | USA | 104 minutes | Ti West)
Maxxxine may be set in a Reagan-era Los Angeles that’s been buffed to neon-tinted sleekness, but there’s no mistaking the grindhouse filth at its core. It’s a glossy Michael Mann chassis, with Abel Ferrara’s grime coursing through its engine. And if it’s the least of the trilogy started by writer/director Ti West with 2022’s X and that same year’s Pearl, Maxxxine’s also one exhilarating ride, and maybe the most openly fun film of the series.
Mia Goth resumes the role of Maxine, the last woman standing in X. She’s spent the first half of the ‘80s in LA, working in the trenches of the adult film industry as Maxine Minx and keeping one eye trained on crossover stardom. The break she’s been craving looks to be within reach when she lands a role in The Puritan II, a horror sequel directed by Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki). But Maxine’s previous misadventures are being used as blackmail fodder by an oily private eye (Kevin Bacon) who’s being hired by a mysterious, black-gloved—and homicidal—client. Then the bodies of Maxine’s friends and colleagues begin piling up, some of whom may be victims of California’s notorious (and real-life) serial killer, The Night Stalker.
At face value, Maxxxine can’t help but feel slight and derivative, partly due to the timbre of the times in which it’s set. X explored the dark side of late 1970s sexual freedom—and the built-up anger and frustration endured by an older generation of Americans on the outside looking in at that permissiveness. Pearl spun a surprisingly resonant, 1918-set dark fairy tale that found a rich through line from the societal repression and pandemic-ridden uneasiness of a century ago to today. This latest entry, by contrast, revels in the overstuffed but ultimately empty excesses of the 1980s without offering nearly as many of the nuggets of pointed social commentary or emotional reverberation built into the two previous entries.
In true 1980s spirit, Maxxxine also trades in the relative narrative leanness of X and Pearl for lots and lots and lots of everything. This means it hurtles a freshly-broken piñata’s worth of references and influences (Brian DePalma erotic thrillers, Italian giallo films, satanic-panic documentaries, 42nd Street exploitation flicks, and loads of others) at the screen. If you’re not in the right frame of mind, and/or expecting a genre effort as substantial as the trilogy’s first two movies, Maxxxine may feel an awful lot like shallow pastiche.
But from this cramped perspective at least, Maxxxine feels less like pastiche, and much more like an utterly unabashed, impassioned mash note to scores of its makers’ favorite things. And there is a difference. Everyone involved knows what kind of movie they’re crafting here, and they’re all dialed to 11.
That starts at the center with the force of nature that is Mia Goth. Goth’s Maxine Minx possesses the pluck and determination of the young protagonist she played to perfection in Pearl, but Maxine takes the increased permissiveness of her era and runs with it here. Goth’s performance bristles with the abandon of someone definitively wresting themselves from any and all social repression, owning and leveraging her sexuality as a springboard to greater things. And it’s impossible not to be seriously invested in her climb to the top—sociopathy and all. The rest of the surprisingly A-level cast likewise maintains the momentum, from Bacon’s deliciously greasy gumshoe to Giancarlo Esposito’s dryly-funny turn as Maxine’s agent.
There’s also no disputing the work occurring behind the camera in Maxxxine. West’s navigated three different movies with three vastly different sensibilities, with the confidence of a legit genre master, and if he’s being indulgent here, it’s also tempered with enough skill and humor to win the day. His guiding hand’s immeasurably aided by cinematographer Elliot Rockett. Rockett may well be the biggest MVP of the franchise this side of West and Goth: he’s crafted distinctive visual rendering for each of these three movies, and Maxxxine represents his lens work at its most dazzling.
And maybe—just maybe—there actually is some inner meaning to be found beneath Maxxxine’s delirious, shiny surface after all. The struggle of female self-agency stands front and center in this entire trilogy, with each movie exploring different angles and eras of that struggle, and Maxine Minx representing the most extreme apex of that self-agency. She may be a batshit-crazy sociopath at times, but she’s also more likable and admirable than the armada of lowlifes, parasites, and murderers looking to repress or exploit her. In the end, this sister is doing it for herself; and sometimes, that requires some (metaphoric and literal) testicle-stomping.
Maxxxine opens in theaters today, July 5. Header image courtesy A24.