Film review: Hollywood, sleazy 80s style, in ‘MaXXXine’

In fact, “MaXXXine” is a love letter to the film from Los Angeles.

The third film in this unlikely trilogy (after “X” and “Pearl”) finds Mia Goth’s Maxine Minx in Hollywood in the 1980s. This is not a glamorous existence. She lives in a run-down apartment on Hollywood Boulevard and works 24 hours a day, in adult films (every man in town seems to recognize her) and in sex shops. As always, she’s madly focused on one thing: becoming a star. And despite her salacious past, she got a big break to star in a studio horror sequel. But her past haunts her and a serial killer is on the loose (“The Night Stalker”), and both seem to be closing in on her, racking up a body count and threatening to get in the way of her big shot.

Maxine, we already know, won’t let anything get in her way.

Filmmaker Ti West, who also wrote the screenplay, appears to be checking off a well-crafted list of “LA movies.” It has a synthesized disco scene, a scene of someone falling into a pool, a plaster cast sequence, and the obligatory costumed extras marching around the studio. West also made a point of really using the city as a location, setting scenes in as many iconic locations as possible: Hollywood Forever Cemetery; The Chinese Theater, before having “TCL”; The Walk of Fame; A modernist mansion in the hills; Bates Motel; And even a short golf cart tour of Universal’s facades and Wild West that anyone who’s done the “studio tour” will recognize.

This is a film full of big ideas, homages to names like Brian De Palma and David Lynch, exaggerated costumes and set design and memorable supporting performances: Elizabeth Debicki, majestic as always, but this time as a serious English author making “B movies”. with A” ideas in the Hollywood system; Halsey, incredibly charming as the prototypical “best friend” of 80s films (somewhere between Laura San Giacomo in “Pretty Woman” and Bess Motta in “The Terminator”); Moses Sumney, a voice of the audience as an experienced videographer with the encyclopedic Lily Collins, having fun with accents like a rising scream queen; Kevin Bacon, also enjoying an exaggerated accent as a corrupt private investigator; Giancarlo Esposito going lower class in a wild wig as a small-time agent/manager/fixer; and Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale as two bickering homicide detectives.

What it isn’t is especially scary. There are several gruesome murders, but it all feels more like self-aware horror satire than something that makes you feel any sense of dread or terror. It ticks the boxes, with blood and variety, but it doesn’t jump off the screen and crawl under your skin. Instead, it feels a little routine. Maybe that’s the point? Maxine has seen a lot and is hard to shake; Perhaps this fatigue was transferred to the public.

Goth is compelling again as Maxine, especially in a killer audition scene, but her character feels underwritten. She doesn’t achieve anything as substantial as the big dinner table monologue in “Pearl.” Although the camera is pointed at her most of the time, the supporting cast seems to have more opportunities to shine.

The very silly climax also has the unintended consequence of greatly diminishing what came before it. Is this what we were building for? Perhaps West and his team leaned too much into the B-movie/video store aesthetic of weirdness, squandering the promise of the world they created. And even then, you kind of forgive it because as lighthearted as it is, and even though its predecessors may have been better, it’s still a pretty fun time at the movies, best enjoyed with an enthusiastic crowd.

“MaXXXine,” an A24 theatrical release Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong violence, graphic nudity, gore, drug use, language, sexual content.” Running time: 101 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.