MaXXXine
Had to finish the trilogy I suppose. X was fun, Pearl was OK (and almost worth watching entirely for the monologue near the end), and now Maxine is a porn star trying to pivot into serious acting in the ’80s. Also there is a serial killer going around. That is to say, two serial killers. There is the Night Stalker, who was a real guy, but there is also another one going around taking out friends and associates of Maxine specifically. Neither of these are the guy who menaces her in an alleyway near the beginning, only to have the tables turned and his balls graphically stomped on, never to be mentioned or referred to again, but leaving quite the lingering image. It makes the point that Maxine is herself dangerous, which would have tied in well to the ending that didn’t actually happen but I half expected. More on that below.
Keven Bacon is having a good time as a sleazy private detective, who is working for someone who is almost certainly one of the two serial killers, since we see him committing several of the murders. He’s hidden by a large trenchcoat and behind-the-back filming. I guess Ti West has music industry buddies, since Halsey and Moses Sumney both show up in minor roles. Can’t actually remember if the former gets murdered, but the latter - a video store clerk, big fan of horror movies - sure does. A lot of the middle of the movie is Maxine preparing to be in her own horror movie (sequel) while all her friends and acquaintances get killed. I was hoping for a conclusion that would implicate Maxine in some way. She has multiple flashbacks to the events of X, particularly when she kills Pearl and backs over her head with a car, which comes across as, yes, I feel a little bad about killing this old lady, but it was very much self defence and was also kind of awesome. Combined with her being armed, and the balls-stomping at the begining, I wondered if she were spiralling out of control. I would probably be here complaining as well about a “it was me all along” ending, because that would make no logistical sense whatsoever (looking at you, Switchblade Romance), but I was pretty disappointed that it was… her dad.
Her dad runs a cult - a pretty standard Jesus cult, though a bit more armed - that’s murdering all the impure to try and get Maxine back in the fold. Instead, she and the two cops that were investigating the thing take them all out and Maxine blows her dad’s head off. What is Maxine’s arc here, what is the conflict? At the start, she’s going from porn to legitimate film (though, horror), then a bunch of murders happen, and at the end she’s going from porn to legitimate film. It’s not like she herself felt conflicted or tempted by some idea of “purity”, that was long out the window. Her plan and motivation did not change at all, her father’s murderous cult was nothing more than a sidetrack. Nobody seems to have changed or learned anything. Is that too much to ask for in this kind of fare? X had better chaos, and Pearl had a better character.