MaXXXine (2024)

There was probably no way that my most anticipated movie of 2024 would live up to my expectations. The bar had been set too high and I amped myself up for months looking forward to this film. I can't say that it's a disappointment, but maybe more of a let down. I wanted something more, and I thought I was going to get it when I saw the opening 5 minutes of the film in a preview with the film "X", that this is a sequel to. Mia Goth has a great moment at the start of the film, and her character of Maxine has flashes of that brilliance throughout the film. However those are only moments and there's a lack of consistency in the character which was frustrating.

Those of you not familiar, "MaXXXine" is the continuation of a story that we got in 2022 set in 1979 in Texas, about a group of wannabes trying to make an X-rated film, and running into a couple of older people who resented their youth and their sexuality. This movie tries to continue the story by tapping into a connection that was made near the end of that film. From the very beginning I knew who the villain of the film was going to be, and the lack of suspense there undermined what I was looking for in the movie. The film does manage to create the same tone that some of the sleazy action films of the mid 80s had. The most likely comparison that will make sense is to the movie "Angel" 

where the featured ingenue is a student by day and a hooker by night on Hollywood Boulevard. The gritty streets, over the top clothes and mannerisms on the street people from the 1980s feels like it was matched pretty well in this movie. Director Ti West has also tried to slip in some red herrings with the presence of the Night Stalker, the notorious killer who terrorized Southern California in 1985. For the most part the connection needs to be stronger, we're not sure why the LAPD detectives who are investigating the murders of young women in the adult film industry believe that the deaths are unrelated to The Night Stalker, especially when the media seems to be playing up such a connection. This is simply part of an incomplete storyline about the investigation of the murders. Maxxxine is a witness, and ultimately a target, but seems to be incapable of deciding how to proceed in the situation. That is not the way the character in the previous movie and the first 5 minutes of this movie would react.

Kevin Bacon shows up as a sleazy private detective who is working for an unseen superior, trying to track down Maxxxine and lure her to an address in the Hollywood Hills. We know right away that this is where bad things are happening, because some of the girls that Maxxxine works with mention that they were going to a party in the Hollywood Hills, and later we see them being abused on video camera. It's not until the climax of the movie that we see the totality of what is going on, but the mere fact that we didn't see the murders of those girls first hand, doesn't mean that we can't see what's coming.

Another subplot that lacks development, but should be the most important part of the story, is Maxxxine being cast in a traditional film and starting to play that part. Instead we get the director pontificating about being ruthless in pursuit of her objective, and therefore acting as a role model for Maxxxine. But we already know that Maxine does not need that kind of role model, she is capable and driven and I would pity the fool who goes up against her. We even get a brief sequence, that has nothing to do with the main plot, which shows exactly how brutal Maxxxine can be in pursuit of her goals. This was exactly a flattering image of Buster Keaton, let's just say some impersonator did get something busted. (Nut Busted Keaton should be the credit name for the character)

The movie is not really a horror film any longer, but rather a suspense thriller. The problem is that there's just not much suspense. The main victim should be stalked more ominously, and the threat should be visualized a little more directly. Other than the occasional interviews by the detectives you don't really see how Maxxxine is being threatened by the secretive employer of Bacon's Detective. In one scene that makes no sense whatsoever, the detective chases Maxine menacingly around the Warner Brothers lot, which then turns into the Universal lot, and puts her in the Psycho house hiding, without a plan. OK, we get the reference to the first movie, but it was a weak scene. Maxxxine can be backed into a corner but she always has a plan, in this movie though,  she just lucks out. And the convenience of at least two lucky interventions undermines the storytelling we'd seen in the two previous movies. The side stories might be consistent for the 1980s style film but as we've said before the things that are happening in the past need to be visualized more in the present. For a film set on the fringes of the pornography industry is surprisingly light on sexuality. There's one passing moment when an X-rated video is being filmed as Maxine walks by, all of the other porn references are to the film that was made in the original movie.

Were I ranking the three movies in the X Series I would simply say they were in declining order. The gap between "X" and "Pearl" is the smallest, those two films were near perfect in the way they mimicked the filmmaking styles of earlier times. They were inspired by films of different eras. Maxxxine is a step down, it gets some of the 80s vibes right but in trying to become something more, like the movie Puritan 2, featured in the storyline, it just doesn't amount to anything nearly as great.