Celebrity is grotesque. In X and Pearl, Ti West painted portraits of fame-starved protagonists using a flesh-red-heavy palette. Through sex and slashes, fueled by unhinged determination, West reminded us that fame attracts sociopaths like moths to a spotlight –adding to the canon of cinema’s nastiest narcissists. With MaXXXine, his take on stardom is laid bare and bloodied.
West’s lurid X Trilogy concludes in a seedy pastiche of 1980s moral panic and paranoia. The decade of excess is a prime setting for the A-list aspiring Maxine, who’s found her way from the Texas massacre in X to the neon-tinted streets of Hollywood –or ‘Tinsel Town’ as the film’s title card reads.
Like its time period, MaXXXine is fun but excessive. The previous installments were satisfying because of their lean and mean premises bulked up with style, points-of-view, and cinematic references. At the end of them, you felt like you had your fill from a solid meal. Where the colorful supporting characters added texture in X and Pearl, the star-stacked cast of MaXXXine verges on Dan Flashes levels of busy on top of a more complex plot. But like Maxine’s double-negative motto “I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” its bravado forgives much of its flaw.
The series’ previous rural setting packs its suitcase for the big city and, with that, come a few other swerves. West plays with a different kind of slasher –one that leans more into the murder mystery than no escape. A mysterious killer with black leather gloves and trilby mark the tell-tale signs of Giallo, a style of Italian mystery whose antagonists lurk in the murky depths of colorfully lit scenes.
We catch up with Mia Goth’s Maxine clawing her way up from her airport-adjacent strip joint to the Hollywood hills. In a display of her egomania, Maxine exudes not only confidence but entitlement in an audition for a role whose backstory closely matches her own. The horror film’s production team underlines the pathos and depth it’s attempting before asking Maxine to take her top off. The scene is packed with meta echoes and self-referential feedback loops, setting the tone for the rest of Maxine’s story.
Goth so naturally inhabits Maxine it’s like watching a re-enactment that features its own subject. Her second turn as the commanding sexpot is such a compelling archetype that it’s difficult to ignore the similarities to her character in Brandon Croenenberg’s Infinity Pool, which she filmed a few months after X. Though the trilogy is an undeniable showcase for Goth, her characters have been buoyed by their supporting casts.
The success of Goth & West’s previous collaborations attracted the interest of a Murderer’s Row cast including Giancarlo Esposito as Maxine’s “amazing agent” Teddy Knight Esq., sporting a wig and a smile as crisp as a coke-dusted fifty dollar bill. Knight comes to Maxine’s aid when she receives threatening messages while her friends get picked off one by one because there’s no one more interested in a star’s prosperity than their agent.
Since Maxine is the common denominator in this killing spree, she’s attracted the attention of a pair of aviator-sporting detectives, played by Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale. Monaghan plays a capable straight person to Cannavale’s goofy, actor-turned-cop.
It’s all a deadly distraction from her first non-porn film role in The Puritan II. In a good example of “let Elizabeth Debicki be tall,” her stature is weaponized as the film’s director Elizabeth Bender, whom West uses as a mouthpiece for monologues ranging in topics from the film industry to conservative pearl-clutching. She’s the kind of demanding auteur who wants to make “a B-movie with A ideas.”
The action is all pushed forward by the hot sauce-drenched accent and three-julep-deep movements of a Louisiana-based private dick played by Kevin Bacon –who coincidentally has no compunctions hamming it up for the part.
While each actor delights in indulging their pulpy assignments, they feel mashed into multiple narratives of the film production, the murder mystery, and Maxine’s past. Adding to the excess of it all are the series’s continued cinematic references including Bacon sporting a Jack Geddes-inspired nose bandage, a visit to the Bates Motel, and multiple name drops of film icons including the third-beat of hat tips to series favorite Theda Bara. There are shootouts that don’t feel much in the slasher-spirit as much as 80s action movie homage.
If this sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. There is a feeling that West took everything that was left in his notebook labeled “X” and wanted to get them all into its final act. Coco Chanel famously recommended one “look in the mirror and take one thing off,” and there is the sense that this movie could have benefitted from that. But also, she was maybe a Nazi collaborator, so fuck her. Despite its overstuffed offering, there’s a lot to enjoy in MaXXXine’s intended schlockiness. I absolutely Rick Dalton-pointed when Toby Huss appeared as “coroner, ” I’m not gonna lie.
Maxine easily joins the Rupert Pupkins, the Dirk Digglers, and the Jill Robertses as deadly reminders that fame is a poison and anyone who wants it is dangerous. In the age of influencers and reality television, it’s certainly worth pointing out.
