“In this business, until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star.” Nothing could loom more appositely large than Bette Davis’s infamous quote in the prologue to MaXXXine.
Because sleazily stupendous Mia Goth’s return in the finale of Ti West’s gruesome trilogy as sleazily stupendously named Maxine Minx is a freakish humdinger of a performance.
If you grimaced and winced while adoring the previous, ever-so-slightly-underwhelming instalments (X and Pearl), this takes things to a whole new level.
It’s 1985, ZZ Top’s Gimme All Your Lovin’ is blasting out of Maxine’s open-top Mercedes, and West is cranking up the sordid neon underbelly of Hollywood to 11. A porn star with a sinister past (it’s not essential to have seen X, but it might help), Maxine is hellbent on making the switch to straight films, telling her boyfriend: “Brooke Shields got naked and now she’s in a f***ing Muppet movie.”
Her big break comes with a role in ironically titled horror film The Puritan II, directed by Svengali-like Elizabeth Debicki, who for reasons unknown is channelling an iffy, Ray Winstone-on-the-menace lilt. This is only out-weirded by Lily Collins’ cameo as Maxine’s co-star, brandishing a “Yorkshire” accent that’s never been north of Watford and so off-kilter it must surely be some kind of in-joke.
Meanwhile, an occultist serial killer is laying waste to Tinseltown’s supposedly fallen women; and has a particular obsession with Maxine. The only reveal of their identity is the deliciously seedy creaking of their stiff, slimy, black leather gloves.
Then there’s that always awesome old sizzle-dog Kevin Bacon as a gold-toothed private eye whose morals were hurled into the gutter at birth. He is very, very insistent Maxine meets his client (could it be ol’ leather fingers?). Her response to his pesky pestering is a response so savage that he can only begrudgingly admire her through blood-drenched teeth: “You do got the devil in you, Maxine.”
Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale are the cops on the trail of the killer, and also Maxine’s ass, while singer Halsey puts in a turn as one of Maxine’s porno co-workers. Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito is his usually excellent measured threat as her agent and fixer. When he’s called upon to press the slaughter button with a casual absence of scruples, it’s quite the stomach-churning/lip-smacking (delete as to your taste for carnage) treat.
While the gore flows as surely and freely as Maxine’s perverse ascent to the summit of the red carpet, West excels with some genuinely memorable cinematic flourishes that were notably absent in X and Pearl. You’ll have never witnessed body parts tumble from a suitcase with such gleeful elan.
Events and characters converge in an utterly over-amped climax, but West can be forgiven for that (and those dodgy accents) because MaXXXine is such a rampantly entertaining hunk of schlocky noir.
And as the closing credits bookend this murky rise and rise with a clever reprise of the spectre of Bette Davis, there’s one thing that’s crystal clear. Even ever-reliable deliverers of brilliance such as Bacon and Debicki start to resemble bit-part actors when on screen with Goth – she is a total phenomenon.
