‘MaXXXine’ Review – A Bloody Yet Pointless Claim To Fame

Personally speaking, Ti West is the type of director who has potentially promising projects that almost always fall short of expectations. See House of the Devil and The Sacrament as prime examples.

Regarding West’s Maxine/Pearl trilogy, X is the most ambitious of the three films (Mia Goth in two roles) and Pearl has the strongest performances. It’s unlikely that West will ever be able to top the end credits of Pearl visually.

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MaXXXine is a direct sequel to X. Maxine Minx (Goth) is an adult film star itching to break into mainstream Hollywood roles. She gets that opportunity when she auditions for the horror sequel The Puritan II.

It’s 1985, Maxine is 33 years old and feels like she was born to be a movie star. While Maxine pursues fame, a notorious serial killer known as The Night Stalker targets Maxine. The bodies keep piling up in Tinseltown, and all of the victims are acquaintances of Maxine.

Strictly based on performances, Mia Goth is still mesmerizing. However, Kevin Bacon manages to outshine her at every opportunity. Bacon plays a private investigator named John Labat.

Labat has a confident swagger that is only heightened by every calculated movement and every magnificent deduction that caters and buckles to an undeniable charm and hypnotic southern accent. Bacon steals every scene that he’s a part of.

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The rest of the cast has disposable roles. Giancarlo Esposito is forgettable as Maxine’s agent Teddy Knight, Esq. Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale portray homicide detectives who are stereotypical and dull. Apart from disliking every suspect they come across and bickering like an old married couple, the two detectives offer nothing of substance to the storyline.

Elizabeth Delicki shines as film director Elizabeth Bender. She has the most dialogue and purpose. She is an established filmmaker with a strong reputation, so she doesn’t require on-screen character development.

As far as making movies goes, Elizabeth has already achieved the fame Maxine desperately desires. She’s at that point in her career where she lets her talent speak for itself. The two characters connect not only because of Maxine’s audition but also because there’s a similar vibe between them. Maxine is reminiscent of Elizabeth when she was first starting.  

A random man (Zachary Mooren) attempts to intimidate Maxine with a knife after following her into a dark alley. He is a contender for the worst actor in existence. This sequence is only memorable because it offers the first and best bit of gore in the entire film. He gets his genitals stomped off by Maxine’s heels.

There are some decent kills in MaXXXine, but it doesn’t make up for the pig slop of a screenplay. Like the rest of Ti-West’s directorial efforts, he is the sole credited writer of the film. However, the film introduces multiple storylines that are all underdeveloped with no proper conclusion.

Maxine is being stalked for the murders that took place during X. She’s haunted by the events of that film. The Night Stalker reveal is disappointing since any other possibility would have been more interesting.

West throws more gasoline on the dumpster fire of a story with an ending that makes no sense. Some of the film’s finale likely occurs in Maxine’s head, but what is reality and what isn’t tumbles into absurdity. It doesn’t help that X, Pearl, and MaXXXine were always meant to be a trilogy, but now West is planning future sequels. The tangled conclusion that made it to movie screens would hopefully be explored further in whatever a fourth film would be called.

X and Pearl were shot back-to-back and released in 2022, while fans had to wait two years for MaXXXine. The third (and no longer final) film in Ti West’s slasher franchise feels rushed, has fewer kills than the previous two films, and takes a serious step down as far as performances go.

West is one of the few horror directors working with micro budgets (X and MaXXXine were $1-$2 million while Pearl had a budget of $8 million). So from a financial standpoint, more sequels seem like a great idea. But if it takes two years to make something this sloppy and this lousy then Ti West should allow the Maxine character to ride off into the sunset like the murderous celebrity she has become.

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