MaXXXine review – it kinda suxxx | Little White Lies

MaXXXine review – it kin­da suxxx

01 Jul 2024 / Released: 05 Jul 2024

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Ti West

Starring Elizabeth Debicki, Kevin Bacon, and Mia Goth

Crowded nightclub scene with women in flashy, revealing outfits dancing enthusiastically on a stage, surrounded by a rowdy crowd.
Crowded nightclub scene with women in flashy, revealing outfits dancing enthusiastically on a stage, surrounded by a rowdy crowd.
4

Anticipation.

Pearl rules, so very high hopes for this big trilogy climaxxx.

2

Enjoyment.

Ugh, truth be told, it kinda suxxx.

2

In Retrospect.

Unless this pulls in the big buxxx, maybe best to let this one lay.

Mia Goth’s porn star­let cleans up her CV with a bloody vengeance in this under­whelm­ing and over­reach­ing hor­ror threequel.

Let’s catch you up on the sto­ry so far: Ti West’s 2022 swampy south­ern slash­er flick X intro­duced us to both aspi­rant porn star­let Max­ine Minx (Mia Goth) and embit­tered, age­ing psy­chopath Pearl (Mia Goth), who end­ed up in the gris­ly duel to the death. It’s not a great movie. 2023’s quick turn­around sequel, Pearl, filled in the back­sto­ry of the epony­mous coun­try gal and her stalled efforts to become a star of local stage and screen. This one worked like gang­busters, large­ly down to Goth’s no-holds-barred cen­tral performance.

At time of writ­ing, MaXXXine looks set to cap off a tril­o­gy (though West has teased a fourth film in the series) as we rejoin the feath­er-haired final girl from X who is now a suc­cess­ful LA porn star, but one who yearns to crossover into straight” film­mak­ing. It turns out that, unlike Pearl, she can actu­al­ly act, and nails an audi­tion to become the lead in schlocky satanist hor­ror sequel, The Puri­tan II, direct­ed by Brit ball-buster, Eliz­a­beth Ben­der (Eliz­a­beth Debicki).

Yet her dreams of main­stream star­dom arrive with some major hur­dles: an unscrupu­lous, pen­cil-mous­tached gumshoe (Kevin Bacon) who knows about her run-in with Pearl; and a ser­i­al mur­der­er called the Night Stalk­er who’s pick­ing off the best and bright­est in Hollywood’s skin flick cir­cuit and brand­ing them with a pen­tan­cle as his sig­na­ture. With one long week­end before she’s due on set, Max­ine will stop at noth­ing to clear her bulging and bloody in-tray.

With the dra­mat­ic uptick in qual­i­ty between X and Pearl, fin­gers and toes were crossed for this one to con­tin­ue on that expo­nen­tial curve. Alas, MaXXXine is the weak­est chap­ter in this throw­back hor­ror saga as West just can­not seem to decide what film it is he’s mak­ing. And by the time he does, he sad­ly opts for the most bor­ing and nar­ra­tive­ly under­whelm­ing one.

A group of women wearing stylish clothes and standing in front of a neon "Lingerie" sign, creating a visually striking scene.

While the film plays meta­tex­tu­al games with its nest­ing films with­in films, it lacks for a cogent com­men­tary or any sense of sat­is­fy­ing for­ward momen­tum. The abuse and debase­ment of the female char­ac­ters is employed pure­ly for genre kicks, while the idea that the glit­ter­ing façade of Tin­sel­town has been fixed in place to shroud a fes­ter­ing under­bel­ly of vice and trans­gres­sion is going to be news to no-one.

Most fatal­ly, the Max­ine char­ac­ter plays to very few of Goth’s strengths as an actor, main­ly the thrilling, hair-trig­ger dichoto­my of being an angel in one scene and a dev­il in the next. Here she trudges through her seedy life with no real empa­thy or con­sid­er­a­tion for the peo­ple who claim to be her friends, a stock femme hard­case who’s deter­mined to land a six inch stilet­to heel on the nuts of any man who cross­es her path. Despite the fact that she’s being ter­rorised from all angles, West can­not muster even the slight­est scin­til­la or ten­sion or sur­prise from a sto­ry that reveals its entire hand in an open­ing 8mm pre­lude sequence depict­ing Maxine’s trou­ble­some childhood. 

While there are var­i­ous indul­gent visu­al and the­mat­ic hat-tips to the likes of Dario Argen­to, Bri­an De Pal­ma, Lucio Ful­ci and many, many oth­ers, there’s lit­tle focus on mak­ing sure the sto­ry feels coher­ent and that Max­ine is a char­ac­ter who you actu­al­ly want to suc­ceed in her bloody tra­vails. If any­thing, MaXXXine suf­fers in com­par­i­son to the all the films and film­mak­ers it so lov­ing­ly apes, end­ing up as a hodge-podge of slight­ly aca­d­e­m­ic homages that nev­er coa­lesce into a sat­is­fy­ing hole. With­out the unpre­dictable whirling dervish that is Pearl, West’s film sore­ly lacks for that com­bustible dra­mat­ic core.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.