Stream It Or Skip It: ‘MaXXXine’ on VOD, the Slashy, Sleazy ‘80s-Set Finale to Mia Goth and Ti West’s ‘X’ Trilogy

This week on How Is Mia Goth Terrifying Us Now is MaXXXine (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), the third film in writer-director Ti West’s X trilogy. It began with 2022’s X, set in 1979 with Goth’s Maxine character surviving a real humdinger of a Texas Chainsaw situation. It continued with a leap back to 1918, where Goth played the title character of Pearl, who murdered her way out of a Technicolor Disney/Wizard of Oz situation in a decidedly Lizzie Bordenesque fashion. And it concludes (reportedly, for now) with MaXXXine, Goth reanimating Maxine, who finally gets her big shot at major crossover fame, which is what she’s always truly lusted after, although she’ll have to make it through a bunch of mid-’80s references to do it. And she can do it, right? You’d be wise not to doubt her.

MAXXXINE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: She did it! Sort of. Almost. Not quite. Maxine (Goth) is on the cusp of fame. No, more like the fringe. The scungy fringe. The gross underbelly of Hollywood where the sunlight doesn’t… quite… reach. She’s Maxine Minx now, a porn star and peep-show artist whose confidence manifests in her stiletto-heeled strut, take-no-guff attitude and particular manner of driving her creamy-white Benz convertible, namely, just gunning it and ignoring basic traffic laws, and making everyone slam on the brakes for her, all the better to draw those eyes, all those eyes. She swaggers into an audition conducted by Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki), who’s directing The Puritan II, the sequel to a slab of horror schlock capitalizing on, and further stirring, Satanic Panic outrage. Maxine gives a wrenching, tearful reading of a crucial scene – and then is asked to take her top off, because it’s 1985, and showing your breasts is an equally important part of the camera test, especially for a movie whose primary ingredient is zillion-gallon tankers of pure, uncut sleaze.

Bubbling in the background of Maxine’s quest for fame is the saga of the Night Stalker, a real-life serial killer who slashed 14 people in L.A. and the Bay Area in the 1980s. Maxine slices through Hollywood to the mellifluous sounds of Ratt and Animotion, hanging with her bestie Leon (Moses Sumney), a video store worker of course, and talking business with her bottomfeeding agent/lawyer Teddy Knight (Giancarlo Esposito). She clocks in at the peep show one day and a black-gloved guy whose face we never see drops in the coin and watches her dance, and seems to be less turned on and more enraged by it, which tells us he’s a complete wacko. I’ll give you zero guesses as to who it is, since you already know. OR DO YOU?

Congratulations are in order, because Maxine lands The Puritan II and learns that Bender is kind of insane and kind of a feminist but also an exploiter and believes the project is “a B-movie with A ideas.” Maxine also meets her co-star, notable because she’s played by Lily Collins, cast presumably because her bountiful eyebrows compensate for Goth’s nearly invisible ones. As the Night Stalker’s victims start hewing closer and closer to Maxine, the cops on the case (Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan) start sniffing around her door. She also meets John Labat, a private detective played by the grossest, nastiest bits of Kevin Bacon. Needless to say, the primary question for this movie is, what will run heavier, the blood or the mascara? NO SPOILERS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: If X was West channeling Tobe Hooper, and Pearl was West channeling Douglas Sirk, MaXXXine is West channeling Brian De Palma. Oh, and Dario Argento (think Deep Red or Suspiria) and Nicolas Winding-Refn (whose depiction of Gross Los Angeles in The Neon Demon was more effective). Also whoever directed all the trash you used to watch on USA Up All Night. And then the movie kind of becomes a riff on Paul Schrader’s Hardcore?

Performance Worth Watching: I’m going to use this space wisely: to pen an ode to Goth, who’s increasingly Swintonesque in her intensity, commitment and strange allure. MaXXXine doesn’t capitalize on her abilities as much as it should, a disappointment in an otherwise pretty gross, pretty amusing ’80s pastiche. She’s still scary, good and scary-good here, although Pearl is her greatest moment yet (Oscar worthy, for my nickel – as in she should’ve WON the Oscar), and Infinity Pool is my favorite Goth outing yet, showcasing her at her most despicably, savagely unhinged.

Memorable Dialogue: Director and actress wind up on the same page:

Bender: Are you ruthless?

Maxine: Yes ma’am.

Sex and Skin: A couple medium-distance shots from a porn shoot, and a depiction of a fellow’s testicular area that might be the most horrific thing I’ve seen in a movie in years.

Our Take: West damn well knows he’s trafficking in the ickiest of nostalgias, with his cheeky-ass close-ups of Maxine snorting coh-oh-oh-oh-oke and very noticeably not drinking a can of New Coke. MaXXXine is homage, it’s spoof, it’s pastiche, and just like the period-specific tones, moods and details it’s aping, it’s shameless and unsubtle. The snake eats its own tail as West slashes up Hollywood and all its crassness, exploiting its exploitative qualities during perhaps the most exploitative decade of the movie biz, when sex and splatter sold like mad thanks to the VHS boom. Nasty, nasty video nasties. 

West unapologetically rummages and roots around in the ick with a De Palma-esque fetishistic fervor. There isn’t much of a focal point to the aesthetic, although the filmmaker occasionally licks his chops at the opportunity to impale sexism on a post-#MeToo pike – the way a studio-lot security guard leers at Maxine, the use-’em-up-and-throw-’em-out M.O. applied to young actresses, the scene with the soul-crushing acting immediately followed by the equally soul-crushing show-us-your-tits bit. This era generated a lot of movies we love but whose productions were surely disturbing under the harsher glare of modern sensibilities. 

So there’s some capital-T There here, for sure, although the majority of the movie is surface-level quality entertainment – fiendish kills, period-specific references, delightfully trashy soundtrack (that Ratt track is a deep cut), misc. catnip for film buffs, Mia Goth glaring right the f— into the camera. Enjoyable as it is, MaXXXine is the least of West’s trilogy, its ending a bit mooshy and only vaguely satisfying; it ultimately nips at the heels of the out-of-nowhere freshness of X, and trails Goth’s memorably devastating, peak-of-her-powers turn in Pearl by a sizable margin. Goth at three-quarters strength in MaXXXine is still worth its weight in blank BASF tapes and acid-washed denim, though. And then some.

Our Call: MaXXXine passes the camera test and earns our attention. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘MaXXXine’ on VOD, the Slashy, Sleazy ‘80s-Set Finale to Mia Goth and Ti West’s ‘X’ Trilogy appeared first on Decider.