Mia Goth returns to the X universe with Maxxine, the latest installment in the slasher series that made overalls cool again.
The first film, X, took place on a remote farm in the ’70s and starred Goth as Maxine, an aspiring adult film actress desperate to break out into Hollywood. The sequel, Pearl, acted as a prequel series in which Goth starred as the titular actress from that remote Texas farm. It’s revealed that Maxine was also the daughter of televangelist minister, which might come into play in MaXXXine.
The third installment uses the ’80s backdrop to show how Maxine has since propelled herself to stardom, but there might be some deadly consequences when a serial killer begins to prey on young women, and Maxine’s troubled past catches up with her. The movie stars Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Lily Collins, Halsey, Giancarlo Esposito, and Kevin Bacon.
While Ti West’s film won’t hit theaters until next week, early reviews are…mixed. Here’s what people have to say:
David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter praised Goth’s performance:
Ultimately, of course, this is the Mia Goth show and fans wouldn’t have it any other way. She’s a magnetic presence who fortifies her command as a new breed of scream queen, tough enough to dish out punishment as well as receive it.
In the space of just two years, the actress and her director have cooked up a highly entertaining slasher trilogy that nods back to the past while striding forward into the meta future, deliciously skewering the pursuit of fame and the lure of desire with a subversive take on female objectification and an outpouring of love for the craft of moviemaking. As Maxine carves up a line of coke with her SAG card, you might find yourself hoping we haven’t seen the last of her.
While Variety‘s Owen Glieberman says that the movie doesn’t hold up compared to the prequel.
The screwy power of “Pearl” was its off-center ambiguity: the way it made Pearl a scary killer. “Maxxxine,” diverting as the film can be when it’s reveling in midnight ’80s nostalgia, has a moral structure that’s both more traditional and creakier — noble heroine in peril (even if she did once kill in self-defense), evil sicko lingering in the shadows.
Ti West is a good filmmaker, but it may be time for him to stop reconfiguring trash. He needs to try embedding A ideas in an A-movie.
Siddhant Adlakha of IGN:
MaXXXine’s one gnarly kill and its one instance of cartoonish violence aren’t nearly enough to justify its meandering 104 minute runtime. Mia Goth shines as usual, and Ti West’s third slasher entry feels more visually polished than its predecessors, but it’s also more dramatically sterile, thanks to a story that quickly falls apart and mounting references that add up to very little (if anything at all).
IndieWire‘s Alison Foreman had a bit more fun with it:
“MaXXXine” is Goth’s most well-rounded performance yet, blending elements of her mesmeric “X” characters with the modern villainy she brought to Brandon Cronenberg’s “Infinity Pool” for a singular genre role. Giving the chameleonic actress more scene partners and set pieces to encounter than ever before in the City of Angels, West uses the final leg of Maxine’s story to imagine how a final girl’s trauma might fracture into a (wildly entertaining) vitriolic spray of revenge. The result is an outrageous display of toxicity with a bubbly appeal that could very well inspire a Charli XCX song all its own.
And Alison Willmore of Vulture believes that Goth carries the film, which would just be mediocre without her:
[Goth’s] performance is more coherent on an emotional level than MaXXXine is overall, though the film has a smeary, seedy energy, like you’d need to give your hands a serious scrub after touching any of its surfaces.
Emma Kiley of Collider:
MaXXXine feels like the movie that Ti West has been champing at the bit to make. It’s the type of film that directors and writers want to make and cinephiles want to watch. Sure, the story isn’t groundbreaking, but it makes up for it in its tribute to why we love cinema, specifically horror, so much. Even though it wasn’t needed, MaXXXine secures Ti West’s trilogy as one of the best in horror history.
MaXXXine opens in theaters on July 5.