"In this business, until you're viewed as a monster, you're not a star."
Bette Davis
A wild rollercoaster through the underbelly of 1980s Los Angeles, MaXXXine closes out the Mia Goth-powered trilogy that began with X and continued with Pearl in characteristically savage style.
If you're in the mood for rolling up your sleeves to the elbows, think slasher horror crossed with LA Confidential crossed with the George C Scott-starring shock-to-the-system Hardcore. It's not necessary to have seen writer-director Ti West's opener X and his prequel Pearl to rough it here, chances are you'll be watching them straight after anyway.
Set against the backdrop of the real-life Night Stalker murders and the moral panic about movies and music, MaXXXine finds adult star Maxine Minx (Goth) nearing the end of her top-shelf life and on the cusp of her big Hollywood break. It's now six years on from the events in X - but "the past ain't finished" with our anti-hero exxxtraordinaire.
Goth's performances in this franchise have made for one of the great screen triumphs of recent years - for the monologue in Pearl alone, she should have received an Oscar nomination - and it's bittersweet watching MaXXXine to know that she will receive wider recognition just as the claret-soaked curtain comes down.
Fears that West's bigger canvas and an A-list supporting ensemble - including 80s icon Kevin Bacon as a swamp-life private eye and The Crown's Elizabeth Debicki flipping the script as a trailblazing filmmaker - would get in the way of Goth's work here have proven unfounded. Although MaXXXine isn't the brilliantly bonkers solo tour de force of the series standout Pearl, it's still a vice-grip watch that gets the era bang-on, shows the grime behind the glitz, and revels in meta mayhem. If VHS was your MVP back in the day, you'll be watching as your younger self.
West has said he's open to a spin-off, just not right now. As MaXXXine shows, nothing is guaranteed in the movie business, but this American nightmare is still too good to end.
