With fewer and fewer films being screened for press in the Baltimore area, I’ll be doing more opening day/weekend reviews. Apologies for folks who’ve been asking for them earlier – I love y’all!

“Do you know what happened to the last person who tried to kill me?”

Story: It’s 1985! VHS tapes! Way too much hairspray! And the start of Maxine Minx’s breakthrough into mainstream movies, after ten years in Hollywood. When her big chance comes, she won’t let anything get in her way. Even when people around her start turning up dead. With the Night Stalker prowling LA, and Maxine’s past coming back to haunt her? It’s gonna be one gnarly ride.

Genre I’d put it in: Cherry-On-Top Horror Trilogy Enders
Release Date: 2024
Remake, Sequel, Based-On, or Original: Part 3 of the Maxine Minx trilogy. Maybe trilogy? Hell, I’d watch more.

Gotta say: I’ve been stoked for MaXXXine ever since Ti West told us that the X and Pearl films would be a trilogy. And when a cast filled with amazing character actors was released? I was gagged. So now that it’s in theaters, what did I think? MaXXXine is fun slasher noir; a mix of 80s cheese and Aughts gore that takes horror tropes and crafts them into fresh, new moments of fun.

Set design and makeup is pitch-perfect here. In one scene, Maxine takes an airbrush to her face, giving herself a red slash reminiscent of Blade Runner. It’s a great look that fits in perfectly with the grimy-yet-hip 80s club scene the character seems to favor. Color palettes for office sets hark back to the mid-80s by way of “we haven’t really updated since the 70s” aesthetics. Costume shoulder pads are gigantic, t-shirts are cropped, and the lines of suits and skirts are sharp as knives, be the look everyday, new wave, or Hollywood and Vine. As a teen back in ’85, I was happy to see “real” retro style. Cinematography blends today’s 4K crispness with scenes shot in grittier focus, especially when the action starts amping up. The lines blur between the story we’re being told and the action we’re feeling, and when split-screen moments hit? I’m in video store heaven.

Mia Goth delivers another amazing performance here, giving Maxine layers that remind you this isn’t some $5 bin horror joint. She commands the screen from the moment she struts onto the screen, to her final moment. But this film is more than it’s lead, however electric her performance is. MaX spoils genre fans with an several casting choices that never once pull focus from the story at hand. Hey, is that genre mainstay Larry Fessenden as a Universal Studios security guard? Damn right it is. Special shout-out to the one and only Giancarlo Esposito as Maxine’s agent Teddy, a blend of father figure and protector. Teddy feels like someone who’s both invested in his talent’s ten percent, along with actually giving a damn about the girl he plucked off the streets. Getting to see Esposito here, and in the new season of The Boys? Well, I feel spoiled, y’all.

All-star “bit players” hinted at in the trailers are Lily Collins, and Halsey. Both are used to full effect here, as a friend of Maxine’s, and film co-star, respectively. While their characters aren’t big in the screen-time department? I still ended up caring about them, thanks to performances that made the most out of these exposition angels. That’s thanks to dialogue that hints at deeper stories for these two. The stock detectives required in any horror thriller are played by Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale, and I don’t know how this film got these two, but I’m so glad they’re here. As with Collins and Halsey, there’s a subtle back-and-forth between the two – along with a riff on the typical good cop/bad cop trope – that elevates the expected story beats.

MaXXXine is another dip into the series’ horror subgenre pool, and y’all? The water is fine. With West, Mia Goth, and the gang tackling the horror-thriller subgenre, things get seedy. And it’s a wonderful way to end a trilogy that’s played with various horror movie eras. Unless we’re gonna get a more modern day follow-up? All I can say is, after all the fun I had with this entry, I’m ready to get stoked yet again.

#Protip: Wanna know how the actors in MaXXXine (and other films) actually “snort cocaine” on camera? Backstage online has a great piece on the how-to. Tidbit for those impatient folks like me (solidarity y’all)? No, learning how to build a snowman has nothing to do with it. It’s most often “powdered lactose, vitamin D powder, and inositol (a sugar produced by the body).”