Rating: ★★

X (2022) was a surprise hit for Ti West, a genre director who has been on the rise since the late 2000s (see below for Ti West’s other films). The film was a stylistic recreation of the 1970s porn film, fed through the Backwoods Brutality cycle. X also brought to prominence Mia Goth, an actress well overdue acclaim before now, who played two roles in the film – as Maxine the porn starlet and an aging woman. At the same time, West and Goth also shot a prequel Pearl (2022), which told the story of the old woman during her youth. A couple of years later, West and Goth returned to complete the trilogy with MaXXXine here.

X was a Backwoods Brutality film, Pearl was Southern Gothic and by the time of MaXXXine what we have feels more like a 1980s psycho film – although it couldn’t really be said that what we have is an 80s slasher film. In all three films, there is the central figure played by Mia Goth cast in different roles that show her caught up by the promise of fame and celebrity as disturbing things happening around her or in the case of Pearl where she herself becomes the disturbed figure.

Ti West’s fascination with these films is the period setting that they take place in into which he places a great deal of detail. Here the 1980s era is prefaced by video clips of Ronald Reagan, fears about the serial killer Richard Ramirez aka ‘The Night Stalker’, the parental morality campaign against labelling lyrics in music and of Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider in court defending himself. Ti West pays homage to the horror genre on a number of occasions with Mia Goth having aspirations to go legit “like Marilyn Chambers” in David Cronenberg’s Rabid (1977), offers pop quiz lists of stars who had their start in horror films and an elaborate sequence that visits the set of the house from Psycho (1960).

I enjoyed X, but felt less enthused about Pearl, although it did come together memorably at the end. On the other hand, MaXXXine, while enjoying a host of good reviews elsewhere, left me going “meh.” I think one of the problems is that Ti West is making a Psycho Film but the psycho element almost feels like an afterthought. There is a figure in black gloves lurking and there are several deaths. On the other hand, we rarely see these take place – mostly, we end up seeing slaughtered bodies after the fact, which makes MaXXXine feel more like a crime film than a horror film. As to the recreation of the era, I look at films such as The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979) and Body Double (1984), which were actually psycho films made in Hollywood during this period, or even Abel Ferrara’s Fear City (1984), against which MaXXXine feels like no more than a glittery surface affectation with the era but lacks an essential feel.

The key factor of the other two films was Mia Goth, whose performances have gained her a good deal of acclaim. (X definitely so but I was less sold on her in Pearl). Here though she seems to largely coasting by on the momentum of those other films. She displays a fierce determination, seems uncertain at other times. However, apart from a great audition scene right at the start of the film, there is never much of the acting fireworks that we had in the other films. Put it this way, if MaXXXine were the first film of the series, what is there here that people would point to and refer to Mia Goth as a great and breakout actress? (That she is I am in no doubt, it is just that there is not much of it on display here).

MaXXXine is a film where Ti West is clearly enamoured with his setting. On the other hand, this is what I would criticise as Ti West’s shortcomings. He has invested a great deal in style and period setting in the three films, and stylistically seems at the peak of his game, but they are also works that are all superficial detail. I come away having watched the Maxine trilogy and asking myself what Ti West had to say with the three films. The common theme that runs through is about celebrity and the desire for stardom. West is also critical of a part of the Midwest that is fundamentalist and damning of fame, sex and immortality yada yada. Here he brings that full circle with an end that connects back to the fundamentalism that lurked in the background of X, which has emerged as a cult that seems intended to punish fame and immorality. And yet out of all the style and retro recreation that has been lavished on MaXXXine, does it all come down to that West has no more to say than that fame makes people do crazy things?

Director Ti West began making films for Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix with the likes of The Roost (2005) and Trigger Man (2007), as well as Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009) for others producers. It was however with his next two Glass Eye pics The House of the Devil (2009) and the ghost story The Innkeepers (2011) that people started to pay attention to West’s name, He followed this with The Sacrament (2013), a Found Footage film about a cult, a modern retelling of the Jonestown mass suicide and the non-genre Western In a Valley of Violence (2016), as well as episodes of the anthologies The ABCs of Death (2012) and V/H/S (2012), plus assorted tv episode work.

Trailer here