Maxxxine (2024)
A spoiler-free review.
A Messy Climax
Writer/director Ti West and actress extraordinaire Mia Goth reunite in Maxxxine (2024) to complete a trilogy borne entirely out of circumstance.
The duo’s first collaboration, X (2022), was shot in New Zealand during the pandemic. Amidst the global rise of COVID-19, the remote island nation kept cases low by limiting travel and requiring all international travelers to isolate for two weeks.
I think X is a brilliant film. It’s an uncharacteristically compassionate homage to the exploitation films of the 1970s, with particular deference to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). X beautifully weds the three “lowbrow bodily genres”: horror, pornography, and melodrama in a film that argues, “It’s possible to make a good dirty movie,” and delivers on that promise.
West’s intent becomes evident at the film’s midpoint. Before the film switches from the aesthetics of pornography to horror, the buxom, blonde Bobby-Lynne (Britany Snow) laments to her fellow porn actors, “One day, we’re gonna be too old to fuck,” and, speaking to the root cause of conservative outrage, states, “We turn folks on. And that scares ‘em.”
Bobby-Lynne sings a moving rendition of “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks while a split-screen montage contrasts the warm potential of youth with the cold reality of Pearl’s wrinkled skin and withered possibilities.
In X, Pearl’s erotic desires and perverse behavior confront viewers with a corollary to Bobby-Lynne’s assertion: elderly bodies turn you off, and that scares you. To paraphrase the words of Stevie Nicks, “You’re getting older too.”
One day, you’ll be “too old to fuck.” You’ll turn people off, and that fact terrifies you.
After completing X, West found himself uniquely positioned. While the rest of the world effectively shut down, grinding film production in Hollywood to a halt, West utilized the already COVID-compliant cast and crew. With everything he needed to make another movie, West and Goth began collaborating on a prequel, Pearl (2022), set on the same farmstead, sixty-one years prior to X.
Pearl is a film about dissatisfaction with rural life and a longing for stardom. Goth, whose collaboration with West on Pearl earned her a co-writing credit, sustains the film with her remarkable performance. Desperate for the adoration of others but burdened by doubt and self-loathing, Pearl deepens its titular character’s monstrous pathos.
Two years later, Mia Goth and Ti West have come together to finish what began years ago on that New Zealand farmstead. The result is Maxxxine, an overstuffed conclusion to an unplanned trilogy.
“Until you're known in my profession as a monster, you're not a star.”
-Bette Davis quote & Maxxxine epigram
Juggling genres and brimming with cinematic references, Maxxxine sometimes feels like a hodgepodge, messy but endearing. In its attempt to be a maxxxster of all trades, it is a master of none.
My harshest criticism is that Maxxxine is predictable, yet it manages to maintain moments of high suspense. Through it all, Goth anchors the film with a performance that exudes beguiling confidence. Busting nuts and serving cunt, Goth proves once again that her star power has enough gravitas to hold a disjointed film together.
Six years after the events of X, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) is pursuing stardom in Hollywood. After making a name for herself in the adult film industry, the thirty-one-year-old actress is keenly aware that she is “aging like bread, not wine.” Her hope for longevity hinges on horror, and she seeks a starring role in “The Puritan II.”
Maxine is deadset on leaving behind the “life she does not deserve,” and ascending to stardom. On the precipice of a promising future, parts of her traumatic past begin to resurface, demanding retribution for her sins.
West is smart enough to implicate true crime in his trilogy’s exploration of exploitative genres, but clever enough not to revel in the ethically problematic facets of a genre that traffics in the suffering of real-life victims, which I find personally detestable.
Ambition spurs West into a sprawling cinematic sandbox, and Maxxxine is a veritable orgy of genre fusion combining elements of horror, pornography, melodrama, erotic thrillers, comedy, noir, and more.
Amid the 80s period detail, equal parts glitz and grime, West also packs his film with both references to his cinematic inspirations (e.g. Chinatown, Psycho (1960), and Halloween (1978)) and to legendary actresses like Bette Davis and Theda Bara, who paved the way for Mia Goth and Maxxxine.
Youth and female obsolescence, in show business and beyond, are themes throughout West’s trilogy. Pearl’s grief over her squandered adolescence manifests in Pearl’s bitter warning that Maxine is destined for the same fate. Maxine internalizes that message and, as shrewd as she is empowered, navigates Hollywood's hostilities in a defiant effort to combat her own obsolescence. Maxxxine explores that theme with a nuance that the film, as a whole, broadly lacks.
Maxxxine also expounds upon X’s deftly constructed sociopolitical commentary in a hamfisted manner, decrying the hypocrisy of “the pearl-clutching moral majority” that blames Hollywood for society’s ills.
Against the backdrop of Reagan’s America in perpetual moral panic, Maxxxine directly rebukes efforts to censor art, stateside and across the pond, in the misguided attempt to protect children when, at their core, these concerns are driven by misdirected anger and projection.
These details and digressions flesh out Maxxxine’s artistic sensibilities, but they also distract from the film’s most essential task: tying together narrative threads from previous installments into a neat bow.
West nominally accomplishes this unenviable task. The third act, predictable yet thrilling, holds the audience’s hand too much for my liking. The film feels the need to explain everything (à la Saltburn (2023)) in a way that reveals West’s lack of confidence in the audience’s intelligence and/or Maxxxine’s narrative coherence.
Maxxxine attempts to compensate for its heavyhandedness with exuberant cinephilia, but the results are inconsistent. It is a flawed film and the weakest of the trilogy. However, throughout the film’s highs and lows, Goth’s performance ensures Maxine is always a delight on screen.
A word of advice to all interested parties: I recommend watching the trilogy in narrative chronology (i.e. Pearl, then X, then Maxxxine) to appreciate the pseudo-chiastic structure of this inadvertent trilogy.
Every time I revisit X, new intricacies reveal themselves. Pearl, a more straightforward film, is static but manages to retain its appeal. I fear that with each subsequent viewing, Maxxxine’s flaws will become evermore obtrusive. Be that as it may, Maxxxine is a helluva good time at the movies that, despite its many imperfections, I am excited to rewatch.
For more reflection on lowbrow genres and Mia Goth worship, check out:
Until next week, travel in groups and avoid any unnecessary nighttime trips, my fellow film freak.