Taglines: Hollywood is a killer.
MaXXXine movie storyline. In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past. After surviving a massacre in Texas, Maxine continues to pursue her dreams of becoming a famous actress, all while evading the Night Stalker in 1985 Los Angeles.
MaXXXine is an American slasher film written and directed by Ti West. It is the final installment of the X trilogy, following the 2022 films X and Pearl. The film stars Mia Goth, who reprises her role as Maxine (and also serves as producer), alongside Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Lily Collins, Halsey, Giancarlo Esposito, and Kevin Bacon. In the film, as the only survivor of a massacre, Maxine sets out for fame and success in 1980s Los Angeles, while being stalked by a killer known as “The Night Stalker.”
Film Review for MaXXXine
A glorious paean to the lurid sensuality and gory excess of 1980s sexploitation and horror, MaXXXine completes Ti West’s trilogy of star showcases for his fearless muse Mia Goth on a delectable note. Like its predecessors, X and Pearl, this is a gleeful dive into retro movie tropes with vivid period evocation, this time featuring a deluxe supporting cast. As Elizabeth Debicki’s ice-cool British filmmaker giving Goth’s Maxine Minx the chance to jump from porn stardom into a more legitimate career says of her feature project: “It’s a B-movie with A ideas.”
That applies no less to West’s latest psychosexual chiller. While never neglecting the blood-letting and spilled viscera of textbook slasher horror, each of the three distinctive yet cohesive films (the writer-director hasn’t ruled out a fourth) doubles as a loving homage to the filmmaking aesthetics of a particular era.
Unfolding in Texas Chainsaw Massacre country with dark and dirty grindhouse flair, X told the story of an amateur film crew shooting a porn movie in the Lone Star State hinterlands in the late ‘70s, until their withered Holy Roller hosts on an isolated farm get wind of what’s going on in the barn. Pearl rewound the clock to 1918 to revisit the farmer’s wife — back when youth and beauty were on her side and her dreams of stardom still intact — mixing the lush style of a midcentury melodrama with that of Technicolor musicals.
Goth did double duty in X, playing both Maxine, the adult-film director’s girlfriend and star, and homicidal hag Pearl. In the follow-up, she stepped into the shoes of the young Pearl, chafing under the restrictions of her oppressive mother while yearning for fame and discovering her voracious libido. At one memorable point she shimmies up a scarecrow for sexual kicks, a scene typical of West’s penchant for winking callbacks, given that the porn opus in X was titled The Farmer’s Daughter.
The new installment, set in 1985, picks up on Goth’s Maxine in her early 30s. She’s riding high as a bona fide star of the booming video porn market, tooling around Hollywood in a convertible with “MaXXXine” vanity plates, though still having to supplement her adult-film work with a peep-show gig.
Borrowing from real-life history, a serial killer dubbed the Night Stalker is terrorizing Los Angeles, preying on young women. But Maxine insists she can take care of herself, which she demonstrates by teaching a painful lesson to the testicles of a knifepoint assailant in Buster Keaton drag (Zachary Mooren). “Drop it, Buster,” she tells him as she whips out her gun.
The Night Stalker killings have fanned the flames of the family-values crusaders protesting the violence and smut flooding the entertainment market, and West (who also edited) emphasizes that climate of moral hysteria by slipping in a quick clip of Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider arriving to testify before a Senate committee in opposition to music industry censorship.
The allure of celebrity and the sticky intersection between the carnal and the spiritual have been an undercurrent running through the trilogy. It stands to reason that the scratchy black-and-white home movie that serves as a prologue to MaXXXine — in which a young girl dances while her off-camera preacher father assures her she’s going to be the star of their church — will have gruesome present-day echoes. “I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” says the child, dutifully repeating her father’s credo.
The film proper gets underway as we watch from inside a darkened soundstage while Maxine slides open the doors and struts in with confidence under a voluminous cascade of feathered hair, poured into a matching acid-wash denim halter top and jeans with spike-heeled boots. She reads for the lead role in The Puritan 2, a demonic possession thriller that ambitious director Liz Bender (Debicki) intends as her stepping-stone from video-nasties to mainstream projects. Maxine also sees it as her crossover vehicle. Naturally, she nails the audition, blithely taunting the lineup of blondes outside that they’re wasting their time.
MaXXXine (2024)
Directed by: Ti West
Starring: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Lily Collins, Halsey, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Bacon, Uli Latukefu, Chloe Farnworth
Screenplay by: Ti West
Production Design by: Jason Kisvarday
Cinematography by: Eliot Rockett
Film Editing by: Ti West
Costume Design by: Mari-An Ceo
Set Decoration by: Kelsi Ephraim
Art Direction by: Jason Zev Cohen, Jason Baldwin Stewart
Jason Baldwin Stewart
Music by: Tyler Bates
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, gore, sexual content, graphic nudity, language and drug use.
Distributed by: A24 Films
Release Date: July 5, 2024
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