Mia Goth performs in a scene in MaXXXine.Supplied
- MaXXXine
- Written and directed by Ti West
- Starring Mia Goth, Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Debicki
- Classification 14A; 104 minutes
- Opens in theatres July 5
“In this business, until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star.” MaXXXine, the newest film from horror auteur Ti West, opens with this oft-quoted sentiment from silver screen icon Bette Davis. With his third instalment in the X film series following the original 2022 film – to which MaXXXine serves as a direct sequel – and its prequel, Pearl, also released in 2022, the writer-director (and editor) is quick to resituate audiences in the X universe and the lust for stardom of its tenacious central character, Maxine (Mia Goth).
The year is 1985 and Maxine Minx (as she is known in the world of adult filmmaking) is hustling day and night on the Hollywood strip, still in search of stardom, however seedy it may be. Having survived the 1979 Texas massacre of her former porn production crew as told in X, Maxine is more tenacious in her ambitions than ever, refusing to let the pervasive fear of Los Angeles’ then active serial killer, Richard Ramirez, a.k.a. The Night Stalker, deter her from climbing the Tinseltown ladder.
This is the era of porn theatres, anti-porn protests and Satanic panic; of austere Reaganomics in the time of the crack era; of Twisted Sister front-man Dee Snider testifying at the U.S. Senate against proposed music censorship legislation. West, as always, is a master at evoking time and place, situating us within an aestheticized vision of 1980s Hollywood sin that evokes the era’s sticky cinema seats and grimy back alleys with a crystal-clear clarity.
Having just landed the lead in a Satanic possession movie (a sequel, of course), Maxine is on the precipice of crossing over from porn to mainstream filmmaking as the new slasher scream queen. The only problem is her friends keep dying. While trying to keep up appearances on the movie’s set, Maxine is dogged both by cops charged with investigating these murders (including the brilliantly cast Bobby Cannavale) as well as a menacing private investigator, John Labat (in another casting win, Kevin Bacon), with ties to the serial killer who threatens to expose the young woman’s past Texas dealings.
It’s a game of cat and mouse that takes its cues from the era’s genre flicks alongside the major influence that the introduction, and subsequent popularity, of home video had at the time. MaXXXine offers up a buffet of slasher motifs, paying tribute to the decade’s cultural obsession with “video nasties” with its own heaps of bright red blood, gory slasher scenes and frequent shots of disembodied leather-gloved hands clenching with a clearly homicidal kind of eroticism.
While West’s continuing preoccupations with quoting a wealth of knowledge of cinema history, its visual styles and modes, as well as the often sleazy machinations of the industry itself is no doubt what continues to attract fans to his work, there is the question of what of substance remains when the roundabout of winking notation and referential visual gratification is all said and done.
As compared to both X and Pearl, West’s bag of cinema tricks in MaXXXine reaches a level of engagement that feels both compulsive and abridged. A man dressed like Buster Keaton tries to assault Maxine in an alley; Bacon’s PI runs around Hollywood movie lots dressed like Jack Nicholson in Chinatown; Maxine hides from him inside the set of the dilapidated house used in the original Psycho. It’s a veritable show of allusions and evocations that race by while, at the same time, leading to nothing outside of themselves.
Combined with a third act that completely fumbles its storyline owing to a failure to fully commit, MaXXXine leaves much to be desired beyond its easy compilation of style and tropes. While not encyclopedic in its undertaking, there is still a knowledge of film and video here that betrays the fact that filmmaking like West’s – the kind that has a clearly studied affection for genre, camp, shlock, and visual excess – should, ostensibly, know better, but continues to flub its own narrative worlds, unable to evoke the successes of films to which he is paying tribute.
While one can’t be sure if it comes down to a lack of sincerity or a lack of skill, it is at least fitting that West hits us over the head with the onscreen quote from Bette Davis during MaXXXine’s opening moments. As is now custom for the filmmaker, he seems content to all too easily point outward rather than doing the more laborious work of building out the kinds of internal worlds that made the actress’ films and characters so revered.
Special to The Globe and Mail