Synopsis:
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.
What We Thought:
I can’t say I’m disappointed in MaXXXine because overall I did enjoy it, but it feels like a lot of other projects out there more than than it does a sequel to X. Set in the 1980s it reminded me of segments in the V/H/S anthology series of films and it also reminded me of something you’d see in American Horror Story.
If you haven’t seen X (or its prequel Pearl), first of all you should remedy that, second, it doesn’t necessarily hurt. This film is a sequel to X and there are flashbacks to the events of X and Mia Goth is playing the same character just years apart, but you can go in blind and still be able to follow along. I don’t recommend that, X is a great film and it would be better to see it first, but you don’t have to.
With it being set in the 1980s the movie is very 80s. Goth’s Maxine is a porn star trying to make her way into real films and gets a part in a horror sequel. There are practical blood effects and all that fun stuff in the movie within a movie. The clothing, the cars, the dialogue and cocaine is all very 80s. Normally that’s a good thing because the 1980s gave us great horror movies, but this feels more like a caricature of the 80s than an homage. You can tell you’re watching a movie of today taking place in the 80s and not a movie that was made then. We’ve gotten a lot of horror movies of late that are throwbacks or homages to 80s horror like Totally Killer or even the season of American Horror Story (1984) that do the same thing.
I think the thing that brings down this film compared to the previous two is the third act. I won’t spoil it, but it reveals who is behind a bunch of killings and I don’t know if that reveal works for me. Instead of it being typical 80s Los Angeles sleaziness and violence, the film decides to have something to say and it seemed out of place. I get that it’s tackling the era of excess and that time period had people questioning the morality of Hollywood, but it felt more like a let down than a good reason.
All that being said if you’ve seen X and Pearl you should finish off the Ti West/Mia Goth trilogy and see MaXXXine. It has plenty of style and a killer soundtrack and Goth does do another fantastic monologue, but I guess the third act was more of a let down than I realize. X remains the best of the trilogy, but it is such a unique and original trilogy that I hope fans do go out and support this.
The Nerds Templar 