Movie Review

Grimy horror film MaXXXine sees a porn star trying to go straight

Mia Goth in MaXXXine

Mia Goth in MaXXXine.

Photo courtesy of A24

The horror movies X and Pearl were surprise indie hits in 2022, with Pearl – a prequel to X – being a literal surprise as its production was conceived of and approved during the waning days of the shooting of the first film. Director Ti West and star/producer Mia Goth have now teamed up for a third film in the series, the suggestively named MaXXXine.

Goth reprises her role as Maxine, an adult film actress who, after surviving the events in X, has made her way to Hollywood circa 1985 in hopes of finding roles in mainstream films. An audition for a horror film directed by Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) seems to lead to a great opportunity, but a serial killer on the loose named The Night Stalker starts to interfere with her life.

Not only do Maxine and others around her have to fear for their lives, but she also gets hounded by private detective John Labat (Kevin Bacon) and police detectives Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale). Determined and more than capable of taking care of herself, Maxine tries her best to push forward with her big break while avoiding the distractions and deaths piling up around her.

West had specific goals with the first two films in the series, as X was an homage to classic slasher movies, and Pearl as much a Technicolor melodrama as a horror film. MaXXXine seems to be almost a loving tribute to the seediness of 1980s Los Angeles and the film industry. The way in which West shoots the movie makes it feel like there’s a layer of grime over the camera, with the whole story feeling dirty, and not in the X-rated way.

However, for a film that seems to want to entice with sex and depravity, it actually contains relatively little of either. West does go for shock value in a few scenes, but overall the movie has a curious lack of momentum. When deaths do come, they seem to happen haphazardly, both at the hands of the serial killer and otherwise. West always had a storytelling purpose for the killings in the first two films, but he lost the thread in that respect for this film.

The story of the film entails Maxine going Hollywood, and there’s the feeling that West may have overstepped by including a bunch of well-known actors this time around. Individually, Bacon, Debicki, Monaghan, Cannavale, and Giancarlo Esposito as Maxine’s agent give fun and interesting performances, but the cumulative effect is distracting. It doesn’t help that most of their arcs, save for that of Debicki, are underwhelming.

Goth, though, delivers another compelling performance even when the story seems to meander. Her distinctive look and personality serve the character well, making her a person who’s equal parts appealing, conniving, and scary. She’s the clear star of the show, and everyone and everything revolves around her, although special notice should be made of Moses Sumney as her friend Leon, who gets a few scene-stealing moments.

MaXXXine needed to have a much more consistent story to be considered as good as the first two films in the series. The presence of Goth, who knows exactly how she wants to play her character, automatically elevates the film, which is a necessity since little else keeps it that interesting.

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MaXXXine opens in theaters on July 5.

Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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