After ‘X’ and ‘Pearl’ the final part of writer-director Ti West’s horror trilogy draws to a potential close with ‘Maxxxine’ that sees Mia Goth as the title star or actually Maxine Minx living and working in mid 1980’s L.A., an era that is quickly established in a title montage that heavily plays on the Reagan era and the fear that held the city with the Night Stalker serial killer and all ironically set to ZZ Top’s ‘Give Me All Your Lovin’ from their seminal album, ‘Eliminator’ that makes up of an excellent score of era defining hits
In a pre-credit sequence we see Maxxine as a little girl dancing in some black & white home movie tell her off screen father ‘ I’ll do whatever it takes….I will not accept a life I do not deserve’ and that life, as we later see, is working as an adult film star. But her ambition sees her later telling us that ‘I’m a f**king star!’ and to that end she auditions for Brit director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debecki) for the sequel to her controversial film ‘The Puritan’ that sees placard wielding Christian protest groups throughout the film. ’Angry people are so easily led’ Bender tells Maxxxine – a line that could so easily be commandeered by Nigel Farrage.
She lands the role but with two of her co-star friends from the adult film world ending up brutally slain seemingly victims of the Night Stalker, Maxine might not make it as far as the set and two detectives Willams (Michelle Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale) himself a failed actor who treats interviews as auditions, are on her case about what she might know. It’s an impressive cast that also includes Kevin Bacon as a sleazy private investigator and Giancarlo Esposito as Maxine’s shady agent plus a fleeting cameo from Lily Collins.
Maxxxine takes us round the Universal sound stages and most notably the Psycho house & motel exterior that make up part of the studios tour (well worth doing if you go the LA studios) and like Norman Bates house up on the hill the characters are a façade. Each with a secret or an ulterior agenda. And the identity of the leather gloved killer is a minor element and a something of an underwhelming reveal when it is known. Ti West’s genre is horror and MaXXXIne has its moments of explicit gory splatter and yet the script is just as much about Hollywood’s objectification of women as it is anything else and though this is supposedly the end of the trilogy this could quite easily see a fourth film. Like director Gareth Wingard ,who started in horror before moving to mega budget blockbusters, director Ti West has proved himself a decent filmmaker but there’s a feeling that maybe now he should turn his ideas to bigger movies.
related feature : ‘Sting’ director Kiah Roache-Turner talks giant spiders, scary sets and Schwarzenegger!
related feature : Mia Goth in ‘Pearl’ – review
Director Ti West introduces the film at the London premiere……
Here’s the MaXXXine trailer….
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