Movie Review: Hollywood, 80s Style, in MaXXXine

If anything, MaXXXine is a love letter to los angeles film.

The third film in this unlikely trilogy (after X and Pearl) introduces us to Maxine Minx, Mia Goths' daughter, in Hollywood in the 1980s. It's not a glamorous existence. She lives in a rundown apartment on Hollywood Boulevard and works 24 hours a day, in adult films (every man in town seems to recognize her) and in sex shops. As always, she's obsessed with one thing: becoming a star. And despite her pornographic past, she's been given a huge chance to star in a studio horror sequel. But her past haunts her and a serial killer is on the loose (The Night Stalker), two things that seem to be coming together, racking up the dead and threatening to derail her big hit.

Maxine, we now know, will let nothing stand in her way.

Director Ti West, who also wrote the screenplay, seems to have ticked off a well-worn list of Los Angeles movie staples. He’s got a CG nightclub scene, a shot of someone falling into a pool, a plaster cast sequence, and the obligatory costumed extras parading around a studio lot. West also made sure to really use the city as a location, setting scenes in as many iconic locations as possible: Hollywood Forever Cemetery; the Chinese Theater, before there was the TCL; the Walk of Fame; a modernist mansion in the hills; the Bates Motel; and even a little golf cart ride through Universal’s facades and old west town that anyone who’s been around the studios will recognize.

It’s a film full of brilliant ideas, homages to the likes of Brian De Palma and David Lynch, kitschy costumes and sets, and memorable supporting performances: Elizabeth Debicki, regal as ever but this time as a serious English auteur making B movies with A ideas in the Hollywood system; Halsey, terribly delicious as the prototypical 80s-film sassy best friend (somewhere between Laura San Giacomo in Pretty Woman and Bess Motta in Terminator); Moses Sumney, a voice of the audience as a savant video clerk with an encyclopedic Lily Collins, having fun with accents as a rising scream queen; Kevin Bacon, also relishing an over-the-top accent as a shady private investigator; Giancarlo Esposito, low-class in a wild wig as a small-time agent/manager/fixer; and Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale as a pair of bickering homicide detectives.

What's not particularly scary is that there are several gruesome murders, and yet it all feels more like an overly self-aware horror satire than something that makes you feel any sense of dread or terror. The film ticks all the boxes, with blood and variety, but it doesn't jump off the screen or crawl under your skin. Instead, it feels a little routine. Maybe that's the point? Maxine has seen a lot by now and it's hard to unsettle her; perhaps that weariness has transferred to the audience.

Goth is once again convincing as Maxine, especially in a killer audition scene, but her character feels underplayed. She doesn't have anything like the meaty dinner table monologue in Pearl. While the camera is on her most of the time, the supporting cast seems to get more opportunities to shine.

This very silly denouement also has the unintended consequence of diminishing a lot of what came before it. Is this what we were trying to build? Maybe West and his team leaned a little too much on the weird B-movie/video store aesthetic, squandering the promise of the world they created. And yet, even so, it's somehow forgivable because, even if it's slight, and even if its predecessors were perhaps better, it's still a pretty fun time at the movies, best enjoyed with an excited audience.

MaXXXine, released in theaters Friday by A24, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for extreme violence, graphic nudity, gore, drug use, strong language and sexual content. Running time: 101 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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