I hope everybody had a good Big Mia Weekend this year! For me, MAXXXINE was easily the most anticipated non-FURIOSA movie event of the summer.
In case you haven’t met Maxine Minx, she’s a character from Ti West’s X (2022). That’s a slasher movie set in 1979, when a group of amateur pornographers rent a farmhouse to shoot their first movie and are terrorized by the octogenarian owners (and an alligator). Mia Goth (A CURE FOR WELLNESS) plays both Maxine, the star of the porno shoot, and Pearl, the withered psychopath she runs over at the end. The prequel PEARL (shot back-to-back and released in the same year) is set in 1918, with Goth playing young Pearl growing up and losing her shit in the same farmhouse.
Now MAXXXINE completes the trilogy with Goth playing Maxine in 1985. Since surviving the massacre she’s had a successful porn career in Los Angeles and is now trying to move into “real” movies, like Marilyn Chambers or Traci Lords. But just when she seems to have her big break a sleazy private detective named John Labat (Kevin Bacon, FRIDAY THE 13TH, WILD THINGS) starts to harass her about her past, and also someone starts killing her friends and co-workers.
When I read that West wanted to make a third X film set in the ‘80s and inspired by “the VHS era,” I figured that might just mean post-FRIDAY THE 13TH slasher movies, but I thought it would be cool if it was more like the ANGEL series (1984-1993), which was about a teenage prostitute turned vigilante on the streets of Hollywood. And wow, I got my wish! It’s ‘80s Hollywood Boulevard, fringe characters who once had dreams of stardom, tough sex workers having to protect themselves on the streets. In fact my favorite scene has Maxine walking home at night, right past a wall of TVs warning people not to be out alone because of the Night Stalker, she goes right into a dark alley and gets accosted by a guy dressed as Buster Keaton (Zachary Mooren, CAT PERSON). Who will regret his decision.
Maxine doesn’t build herself a family of misfits like Angel does, but we see through the course of her day that she has many friends at the strip club, the peep show booths, and the porn studio, she lives above an adult video store (that also carries horror) and is close with the owner or clerk Leon (Moses Sumney, a musician who appeared in CREED as a member of Bianca’s band).
With a stronger focus on Maxine, a much larger scope (multiple locations, longer period of time, more story threads) and a mystery premise, MAXXXINE feels totally different from X, but there are similarities. She hoped THE FARMER’S DAUGHTERS would make her a star, now she hopes THE PURITAN II will make her a different kind. And some of the characters have parallels. There are her fellow friends of the industry who become victims (though they have less screen time here). Her agent/lawyer Teddy Knight (Giancarlo Esposito, FRESH) is similar to Wayne Gilroy – an older, sleazy man who seems noble to her because he helped her when she was in trouble and really believes in her becoming a star. And her director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki, WIDOWS) is Hollywood’s answer to RJ, the film student who thought he could stand out by treating his porn as art. There’s obviously a meta element to this – it’s a sequel in a horror series but she compares Maxine’s character to Charles Bronson in DEATH WISH – and she says something like she wants “a B picture with A ideas.” As with X, I suspect West may be confessing his intentions but in a sort of self-mocking way, not a self important one.
Just as the other two in the trilogy nod to the cinematic style of their eras, MAXXXINE throws in some ‘80s flourishes like inkbrush fonts and a muddy, degraded texture to the video format. I’m pretty sure it cleans up for the movie-within-a-movie, which I liked – usually they go in the other direction. The song choices (Animotion’s “Obsession,” New Order’s “Shellshock,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Welcome to the Pleasuredome”) really sound like a soundtrack of the era, and I’m particularly impressed by Tyler Bates (BALLISTIC, GET CARTER)’s score, which not only gets the synth sounds right, but the guitar stings, and the saxophone! It almost feels like it could’ve been part of the GRINDHOUSE franchise had that become a thing, but I mean that as a compliment. It doesn’t feel like parody. And I love that the big ‘80s reference in this movie is about is uncool as they come – ST. ELMO’S FIRE! Usually it’s too tempting to reference a childhood favorite or a cult classic. It’s time the kids knew the truth that even if we remember the ’80s for THE THING and EVIL DEAD 2 at the time people paid more attention to an insipid yuppie coming-of-age movie.
Meanwhile, without naming them in the movie (only interviews), West channels the spirit of ‘80s urban exploitation movies like VICE SQUAD and the aforementioned ANGEL. Here we see characters you wouldn’t see out on the farm, like the police detectives, Williams (Michelle Monaghan, KISS KISS BANG BANG) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale, PARKER), a failed actor who’s always putting on a performance. Maxine follows a no snitching policy, not trusting them any more than the private eye who’s stalking her.
As one would expect, Bacon goes to town on his character, doing an over-the-top New Orleans accent and just making him a gross asshole we know is gonna be enjoyable to see get come-uppened by our dear Maxine. Expanding beyond a limited location also allows for Toby Huss (COPSHOP) to pop up as a coroner, and Larry Fessenden (HABIT) as a security guard. (Giving Larry Fessenden a cameo in your horror movie is kind of like getting a holy man to bless your house.)
But this is not about the ensemble, really. This is about Maxine. It’s just so unusual as a sequel. She’s off in a different place facing a different threat but she’s on the run for what she did in the first movie – killing the bad guy. That never happened to any of the other Final Girls! Also, they never went off and were the main character in another movie with a different killer (not counting copycats in SCREAM sequels). The threat here is set up in the first movie but it’s not a repeat of what we saw before.
When X came out I didn’t remember Goth from the SUSPIRIA remake, didn’t know who she was. When I realized she played both Maxine and Pearl it raised my eyebrows, but her performance in PEARL burned them right off. It’s my favorite of the series because it’s built around how fun it is to see her play that character. Pearl is a total psycho who we know lives to a very horny 80 and chops up a bunch of innocent people, but we love her and want to fix her. One of the great characters of modern horror.
Now for the trilogy-capper she’s playing that other character from the first movie. We get back into what Maxine was about and then where she’s progressed to now. But Goth playing both characters always signaled parallels between them, and Pearl remains a presence in MAXXXINE. She’s mentioned by name once, when Labat tries to threaten Maxine with what he knows, and she’s alluded to in a badass moment when Maxine asks “Do you know what happened to the last person who tried to kill me?”
I love the scene where Maxine visits the set of PSYCHO (and PSYCHO II, it is noted) and thinks she sees old Pearl in the window, like Norman saw his mother. There’s the straight forward interpretation that she’s haunted by memories of Pearl killing her friends and/or the fact that she killed Pearl (something she never fessed up to, maybe because she’s a runaway, maybe because she knows she went overboard). But also there’s the Norman Bates interpretation that they’re the same. Not literally the same person in this case, but she has that Pearl in her.
It was kind of a trick that Maxine survived X at all – West uses every trope in the book to set up Jenna Ortega’s character Lorraine as the heroine, then she’s abruptly blasted with a shotgun. The “Church Mouse” didn’t make it so it was up to a character who would’ve been a goner in any ‘80s slasher to rise to the occasion. As I wrote in my review at the time, she’s “Maxine, the burlesque performer turned porn actress, the lapsed preacher’s daughter runaway, who snorts cocaine at the beginning and end of the movie. And she’s our hero. It’s not ironic. We like her. Movies can do that now. I respect that.” Radical forgiveness.
Having transcended the judgment of the slasher formula, now Maxine faces the wider conservative streak of the Reagan years. An opening credits montage throws in snippets of Tipper Gore telling Congress about “Darling Nikki,” we’ve got (kinda fake looking but narratively important) Christian protesters picketing the production of THE PURITAN II, and some satanic panic kicked off by the real life serial murders of the so-called “Night Stalker.” (I think it’s kinda gross to reference a real killer so much, but then I was able to enjoy SUMMER OF SAM, DERANGED and ONCE UPON A TIME …IN HOLLYWOOD, so I don’t know.)
This is either a MAJOR SPOILER or QUASI-SPOILER here because it was what I assumed was going on, but my friends who hadn’t seen X since it came out did not. The unseen, leather-gloved figure who hires the private eye to find Maxine and also kills her friends turns out to be YES THIS IS THE SPOILER her father, just credited as “Televangelist” in X and still played by Simon Prast (THE SINKING OF THE RAINBOW WARRIOR). Maxine ran away from him into the porn industry, so in a way he’s George C. Scott in HARDCORE. But he’s also the killer/cult leader, so when he’s unmasked he plays it big like Betsy Palmer in FRIDAY THE 13TH. As in West’s also-‘80s-set 2009 movie THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (co-starring Greta Gerwig!), there’s a big build up to a ritual and then it’s rushed through not-so-coherently, but what does come across is the hypocrisy of these extremists who call everybody and everything the devil and in trying to prove it they end up sacrificing women and even branding them with pentagrams. They call Hollywood sick while shooting actual snuff videos as part of their religious practice, making for found footage sequences that are the queasiest part of the actual movie. They stage their big finale ritual for cameras, and some of the cultists in scary robes are holding boom mics. Just like Maxine, or Pearl before her, Dad wants nothing more than the spotlight.
I loved watching MAXXXINE and I loved watching Maxine. Though not as much of a showcase of Goth’s mega-ness as PEARL or INFINITY POOL, it’s another one fueled by her great performance. Maxine is less fragile than in X, and has earned some swagger. She gets to strut. But now she kind of has three sides: the regular Maxine her friends know, the terrified one hiding secrets, and the savage survivor only seen by the bastards who corner her and push her over the edge.
So the only reason I think this fails to live up to X or PEARL on a first viewing is that we never get an extended experience with that third Maxine. There’s a great set up and reason for her to really run wild at the end, and she does ultimately get to put an exclamation point on it. But she’s tied up for most of the climax instead of driving the action. Maybe it’s supposed to be subverting something, but it’s frustrating.
To be fair, I sort of felt that way about X the first time too. In my review I said “I think by the end we’ve earned a couple more rotations over the top that we don’t end up getting.” But later rewatching X as a double feature with PEARL really raised my appreciation of it, and I hope later this year I’ll be able to buy a trilogy box set and see what happens watching all three. (Maybe in narrative order this time instead of release order?)
Despite my problems with the climax, the conclusion is pretty good. SPECIAL ENDING SPOILER ZONE THIS PARAGRAPH ONLY: For this whole movie she’s had two goals: hide her secret murdering past, and fulfill her dream of becoming a star. I think when she becomes famous for both acting and splattering her dad’s head into mush it’s not some NATURAL BORN KILLERS type violence-in-the-media satire bullshit, it’s sort of a coming out. She’s got nothing to hide now. She’s an open book.
For the time being, MAXXXINE is my least favorite of the trilogy, despite seeming the most designed for me. But I’ve seen some references to people really hating it and that I can’t comprehend. It has a select menu of knockout gore moments that had the audience laughing well into the next scene, it has some really great lines and jokes I keep suddenly remembering and laughing about again, it follows its own idiosyncratic path in horror franchising, and most of all it has Maxine Minx. Sadly there are many movies these days that don’t even bother with that.
P.S. I hope the X-verse continues. I still want HOUSE OF PEARL (black and white classic horror set in the ’30s – or ‘60s if West is in a CARNIVAL OF SOULS mood) and here are some other titles I am offering to A24 pro bono:
MINX: MAXXXINE PART II
MAXXXINE: STATE OF THE UNION
MAXINE xxx PEARL: THE NEW EMPIRE
PEARL INTERRUPTED
THE PEARL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
A PEARL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT
If MAXXXINE does huge box office and justifies a big budget sequel, her ‘90s movie should be a DIE HARD ripoff, like DIE HARD at a film festival or something. If the budget has to be lower it should be a cyber thriller, an inspirational teacher movie or a PRETTY WOMAN remake. And then 2000s could be a dance battle movie.
P.P.S. I wonder if West ever considered including a sewer alligator?
July 8th, 2024 at 10:40 am
Fun fact: In 2024, the villains of this movie serve as Republican lawmakers.
Loved this one, though yes, it may be the weakest. It dicks around with Kevin Bacon as a sub-boss too long and then just rushes to the main boss in a way that feels dramatically unearned — how does Maxine really feel upon confronting the source of all that death to be her own father?
I also caught the Vice Squad vibe. The 80’s details are great. Also, Vern, Maxine shit-talks her killing of Pearl to the Buster Keaton guy, not to Kevin Bacon.
BTW, Moses Sumney has several really good pop albums out there.