Film review: MaXXXine sees Mia Gold in sublime form

Mia Goth in MaXXXine

• MaXXXine
• ★★★★☆
• Theatrical release

YOU don’t have to be a sociopathic killer to succeed in Hollywood, but it gives a girl an edge. MaXXXine (18s) opens with Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) arriving in Hollywood in 1985, the only survivor of ‘the Texas Porn Star Massacre’ (the plot of the 2022 film X) and determined to become a bona fide movie star.

It won’t be easy: Just when Maxine is offered the lead in the horror flick The Puritan 2, a seedy private eye (Kevin Bacon) looms up out of her past and threatens to expose Maxine’s homicidal exploits.

And then there’s the Night Stalker, a Satan-worshipping serial killer who targets sex-workers and who has fixated on Maxine as the perfect victim. Written and directed by Ti West, who also helmed X and its prequel, Pearl, MaXXXine plays out against a Hollywood in the throes of a moral panic, with protests outside the studios against the licentious behaviour that is leading America’s youth astray.

Not that Maxine needs much encouragement: Brutalised from an early age by the men in her life, Maxine takes no prisoners as she cuts a swathe through the predatory males that throng the Hollywood boulevards. 

On the surface a revenge thriller slasher flick, MaXXXine is actually about moral hypocrisy and female empowerment taken to its logical conclusion, with Goth in sublime form as Maxine demonstrates yet again that the female of the species is deadlier than the male.