Bonus Review: MaXXXine

Hollywood Is A Killer

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INTRODUCTION

This is a quick review of the newly released film MaXXXine. Keep in mind this is but one of the many movies I watch every year, and that whatever initial grade I come up for this film could change for better or worse with time. To better keep up to date with both my thoughts on other movies and if my feelings on this film changed, follow me on Letterboxd.

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THE PLOT

Via Letterboxd: In eighties 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.

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QUICK REVIEW

Ti West directed two horror movies that released in the same year back in 2022, and both were instant overnight modern horror classics. I don’t know that I would say the same, but you can make a legit case that they combined were among the most impactful films of that amazing year for cinema. Those movies were X and its prequel, Pearl. The former a sort of “Texas Pornstar Massacre”, and the latter a kind of period-piece, female version of American Psycho. Anchoring both was Mia Goth who was great in the former, but absolutely delivered in the latter with a performance that made my personal ballot for Actress that year, alongside a couple critics’ groups nominations as well.

Personally I found X to be okay and Pearl to be just a little better, but Goth’s commitment and the eighties aesthetic of the incoming third film, MaXXXine, made me pretty excited about the possibilities for this one. Mia Goth back in one of these, Kevin Bacon as a sleazy private detective, eighties soundtrack and look, some mysterious masked killer going around chopping up poor sex-crazed protagonists and making you rethink being a sinner, what could go wrong?