103 min | R | July 5, 2024 | A24
Ti West completes his horror trilogy with Maxine Minx in 1985 Hollywood. Mia Goth goes full movie star. The Night Stalker lurks. The ambition is bigger. The results are messier.
Maxine Minx survived the Texas farmhouse massacre and the New Zealand prequel. Now she is in 1985 Los Angeles, working in adult films and auditioning for a horror movie directed by a legitimate filmmaker. She gets the part. Then someone starts killing women connected to her past. The Night Stalker is terrorizing the city. A private investigator is digging into Maxine’s history. The walls are closing in. Ti West builds the third entry in his X trilogy as a Hollywood noir that uses the Satanic Panic era as both setting and metaphor.
Mia Goth plays Maxine with the ferocious ambition of a woman who will not let anyone take what she has earned. She is magnetic and dangerous and the camera loves her. The performance has movie-star confidence that the previous films only hinted at. Elizabeth Debicki plays the film director with cool authority. Kevin Bacon plays the sleazy private investigator with a greasy charm that is both funny and threatening. Giancarlo Esposito plays Maxine’s agent. Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan play detectives. The cast is stacked and everyone understands the assignment.
West shoots 1985 Hollywood with neon-soaked affection and period detail. The Hollywood Boulevard locations feel authentic. The film-within-a-film sequences capture the era’s horror aesthetics. The cinematography by Eliot Rockett is the most visually ambitious of the trilogy. The score channels John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream. West uses split diopter shots and zooms to evoke the films Maxine is auditioning for.
The film is not as tight as X or as surprising as Pearl. The mystery plot is the weakest element. The reveal of who is behind the killings does not land with the impact West intends. But the trilogy as a whole is a remarkable achievement. West made three films about a woman who refuses to be a victim across three different decades and genres. Goth made that woman unforgettable. A24 gave them the resources and the freedom. The ambition exceeds the execution. That is better than the reverse.