Say hello to Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), the (anti)heroine of Ti West's "MaXXXine," the third installment in his hastily dispatched "X" trilogy. Last we saw Maxine, she was beating a quick retreat away from a Texas porn star massacre, leaving a trail of bloody carnage in her wake. It's now six years later, in 1985 Los Angeles, and Maxine, an industrious porn starlet and peep show performer, is determined to transcend her trashy, traumatic origins to become a capital-S Star of the silver screen, no matter what it takes.
Maxine won't let anything get in the way of stardom when she scores her first mainstream film role, in a horror sequel titled "The Puritan II." No butchered friends, no Night Stalker, no pesky LAPD detectives and no annoying private eye (Kevin Bacon) on her tail. Maxine will not accept a life she does not deserve, and don't you forget it.
Like the previous two films in the trilogy, "MaXXXine" offers writer-director-editor West an opportunity for genre play. If "X" was a grimy '70s slasher, and prequel "Pearl" was a Technicolor musical with ax murdering, "MaXXXine" wears the skin of a sexy, sleazy '80s erotic thriller. But that proves to be only aesthetic: there's neither eroticism nor thrills — it's just a cute costume.
All the audio and visual signifiers are there: a great soundtrack, meticulous production and costume design re-creating '80s Hollywood, lots of stylistic nods to giallo films and the filmography of Brian De Palma. But West doesn't wield these refe.
