MaXXXine

Mia Goth

Spoiler Alert

Ti West's MaXXXine was a slight disappointment to me. I thought his two previous Mia Goth vehicles, X and Pearl, showed signs of artistic growth from West who had toiled on mediocre B horror films for over a decade. At the very least, X and Pearl had established Mia Goth as a viable and interesting lead. Goth is again the focal point in MaXXXine, playing an adult film veteran, Maxine Minx, trying to break into the no less exploitive mainstream movie industry in 1985. The project she tries out for is a horror sequel helmed by a female director entitled The Puritan 2. This film within a film shares MaXXXine's theme which is a critique of American Christian fundamentalism and intolerance. 

The main plot line of the film concerns a murder mystery which ensnares Maxine. Friends from the porn industry and Maxine's neighborhood end up brutally murdered and have satanic symbols branded on their faces. That the perpetrator is Maxine's long lost preacher father should be no surprise to anyone, since a telltale clue is given in the film's opening scene. West wants to show the Moral Majority of the 1980s as inheriting the malignant influence of the Puritans, but I feel he over eggs his pudding. Religious fundamentalists in America have spread intolerance, but don't generally eviscerate and brand their targets. MaXXXine has been accurately described as a pastiche of the work of Brian De Palma, particularly Body Double which also has a dance club scene featuring Frankie Goes to Hollywood. In my view, that would make it a pastiche of a pastiche. At least in De Palma's ouevre, you get complex and interesting villains, especially when played by John Lithgow. West's villain, a fire breathing stage father, would have been deemed a one dimensional cliche in the 1930s much less today. 

Halsey and Mia Goth

Elements of MaXXXine are first rate. I enjoyed the trashy 80s soundtrack and the film's costumes and production design. MaXXXine presents us a lurid  and vivid 1980s LA as a neon kissed Hades. The performances, however, are all over the map: ranging from expertly assured (Goth and Giancarlo Esposito) to solid competence (Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Monaghan) to promising (Lily Collins, Halsey) to deplorable (Kevin Bacon, Elizabeth Debicki). West has not given his talented cast too much leeway, cartoon blood and drool are on tap after all, but he has given them enough rope to hang themselves. Ultimately, there is little unanimity of effect in MaXXXine's performances. 

A brief comparison to the modern American cinematic master of surrealistic horror, David Lynch, displays what is lacking in West's vision. The rehearsal scene between Naomi Watts and Chad Everett in Mulholland Drive is more subtle and devastating about Hollywood than Mia Goth having to take off her top after nailing her audition for The Puritan 2. Lynch is too canny to embody evil in an individual or group. He knows that evil resides most wholly in an unconscious form that cannot be portrayed literally. When Lynch does portray an evil patriarch, like Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks, he presents the character in a bifurcated fashion. Even the most heinous or craven has two faces. Unfortunately, in MaXXXine, despite having a mythic heroine, we get a one dimensional villain. Moral ambiguity is apparently beyond Ti West and the Moral Majority.