A porn actress attempting to go legit in 1980s Beverly Hills becomes the target of a mysterious killer in MaXXXine, now playing in Prague cinemas after premiering locally at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. While Ti West‘s sequel to cult hits X and Pearl is the first in the series to garner a theatrical release in the Czech Republic, it’s easily the weakest to date.
MaXXXine stars Mia Goth as the titular pornstar Maxine Minx, who also moonlights as a peep show performer when she isn’t nailing auditions for her big breakthrough Hollywood project. After impressing director Elizabeth Bender (an underused Elizabeth Debicki) she gets cast as the lead heroine in the low-budget horror sequel Puritan 2.
But there’s only one problem as Maxine rises to Hollywood stardom: everyone around her seems to be getting knocked off one-by-one. The next victims of a the brutal killer could be fellow porn actress Tabby Martin (Halsey, excellent in a bit part), video store clerk and friend Leon (Moses Sumney), Molly Bennet (Lily Collins), lead actress in the original Puritan film… or even Maxine herself.
The mysterious killer has hired private detective John Labat (played a scene-stealing Kevin Bacon) to trail Maxine (why didn’t Michael Myers ever think of that?), but the actress has an ace up her sleeve: Z-list agent Teddy Knight, Esq. (Giancarlo Esposito), whose exploits deserve their own movie. Meanwhile, a pair of inept homicide detectives (Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale) stumble around the murder scenes.
Director West is a master of building slow-burn horror atmosphere, and at his best building almost unbearable tension in films like The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers. His Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired X and its Hollywood Golden Age throwback prequel Pearl traded in some of the horror for trenchant period detail, but still worked on their own terms.
MaXXXine, too, delivers on the period detail: this recreation of early 1980s Los Angeles looks and sounds terrific, and plays especially well in earlier scenes detached from the narrative. Neon-lit scenes of the leather-gloved killer riff on the work of Dario Argento and Brian De Palma, and the soundtrack is filled to the brim with familiar hits from the era and a matching original score by Tyler Bates.
But once the focus turns to the story, especially in the second half of the movie, MaXXXine begins to shed all the goodwill it has built through the first-rate period recreation. Climactic scenes involving the identity of the killer and their master plan are not only implausible, but entirely senseless, and a B-movie action shootout at the finale is devoid of any tension whatsoever.
Worst of all, we no longer care about the protagonist. Goth’s Maxine had a tangible character arc in X, but her lead here is entirely one-note. After brutally humiliating a would-be alleyway rapist in one of the film’s early scenes, there’s little doubt she’ll be able to handle whatever else the film throws at her; like Pearl, MaXXXine could have used a little self-awareness in detailing the story of its real monster.
Still, MaXXXine might be worth catching for the style alone, especially for fans of the kind of sleazy 1980s sex thrillers director West strikingly emulates here. This one doesn’t live up to the standard established by X or Pearl, but offers its own brand of sordid appeal.