Maxine review: Third instalment of darkly comedic mini horror franchise with Mia Goth and Kevin Bacon

MAXXXINE

(18) 104mins

★★★★☆

IT’S 1980s Hollywood, and Maxine Minx, an adult movie star, manages to bag a part in a mainstream horror movie.

But her dreams of hitting the big time are at risk of being thwarted when she is stalked by a serial killer.

AP

Writer-director Ti West returns with a cracking third instalment in his mini horror franchise. MaXXXine is a direct sequel to X, a 2022 horror set in 1979 in which Mia Goth played an aspiring porn star hounded by elderly serial killer Pearl during a shoot at a Texan farmhouse.

Darkly comedic

Later that year, West released Pearl, a prequel set in 1919 that explores the origins of the murderous Pearl, once again played by Goth.

This time we see Goth’s Maxine hired by ball-breaking director Elizabeth Bender (The Crown’s Elizabeth Debicki in 80s shoulder pads) to be in her horror movie, with the actress believing that her time for Hollywood fame has finally come.

As several people she knows start turning up dead, Maxine is being threatened by sleaze-ball private eye John Labat (Kevin Bacon) who has been hired by someone from her past to bring her back to the fold. With the support of her agent-cum-lawyer Teddy (Giancarlo Esposito), Maxine takes the law into her own hands despite being offered help by a squabbling LAPD cop duo (Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan).

Having paid homage to Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in X and to The Wizard Of Oz in Pearl, West tries his hands at ’80s video nasties — the name given to the era’s VHS slashers — with impressive ease in this new film.

In the movie — which also features singer Halsey as Maxine’s pal Tabby — director delves into the corrupting nature of fame. Highlighting the many moral panics from the ’80s that presented rock music and the horror genre as satanic, West presents the moralists and the censors as the real villains in this movie.

With its seductive retro look and brilliant performances from Goth, Bacon and Debicki, MaXXXine is perhaps the ballsiest film in the series.

While there are some wince-inducing violence, the film maintains a playful wink throughout, suggesting the violence is intended to be darkly comedic.

This is how you pay homage to Hollywood in a fun way and without sentimentalism.

• Linda Marric

ORLANDO: MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY

(12A) 99mins

★★★★☆

FIRST published in 1928, Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf tells the story of an English nobleman who is born male but undergoes a sex change to become female.

Filmmaker Paul B Preciado’s documentary-style interpretation takes a range of real-life French contemporary trans and non-binary voices who all relate as “Orlandos” and tell us why the novel still speaks their truth.

Some scenes veer into pretentiousness – but for the most part this is a polished, fascinating exploration of what it means and meant to be a trans or transitioning person.

Enactments, welcome wit and monologues from fascinating characters such as the engaging Jenny Bel Air will make you consider why “the contemporary world is full of Orlandos”.

• Laura Stott

KILL

(18) 105mins             

★★★☆☆

PA

IF violence and epic fight choreography is your thing, then there’s little not to like about this Hindu language brawl-fest from director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat.

Army commando Amrit (newcomer Lakshya) is in love with a billionaire’s daughter Tulika (Tanya Maniktala) but her family have arranged for her to marry someone else, so he boards a train to New Delhi to pledge his love to her and attempt to derail the nuptials.

But when a group of weapon-wielding bandits led by the bloodthirsty Fani (Bollywood star Raghav Juyal) invade and take control of the locomotive, a killing spree ensues.

There is some humour, in particular when Amrit’s outrageously handsome looks are lightly mocked, but for the most part it’s all gratuitous hunt and kill only. Not for the squeamish.