A slick, pulpy 1980s Hollywood slasher with strong atmosphere, a magnetic lead performance, and plenty of grime-soaked style, but it’s also uneven and increasingly chaotic as it goes. If you’re here for neon noir energy, practical gore, and a trashy showbiz nightmare, it delivers; if you want a tightly built… Read more
MaXXXine
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Horror · Thriller
Thu · 1h 43m
Director: Ti West
Starring: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney
Overview
In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.
Director
Ti West
Cast
Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney
Curator Review
Verdict
A slick, pulpy 1980s Hollywood slasher with strong atmosphere, a magnetic lead performance, and plenty of grime-soaked style, but it’s also uneven and increasingly chaotic as it goes. If you’re here for neon noir energy, practical gore, and a trashy showbiz nightmare, it delivers; if you want a tightly built thriller or a satisfying payoff, it may frustrate you.
Best for
fans of stylized horror with a retro Hollywood setting
viewers who like campy, self-aware genre mashups
people drawn to star-driven performances and practical effects
audiences interested in 1980s sleaze, fame, and serial-killer paranoia
Skip if
you want a coherent mystery with a clean third act
you dislike exaggerated camp or tonal whiplash
you prefer restrained horror over flashy gore and pulp
you’re not interested in sex-work-adjacent showbiz satire
Overview
MaXXXine is at its best when it leans into sleazy, sun-bleached 1980s Los Angeles: the neon, the video-store grime, the panic around fame, and the sense that every sidewalk is a trap. Ti West builds a vivid world of ambition and exploitation, and Mia Goth gives the film its pulse, carrying Maxine as both survivor and self-invented icon.
Worth noting
The movie also has a real appetite for pulp. It wants to be a slasher, a Hollywood nightmare, a satire of image-making, and a serial-killer thriller all at once. That ambition gives it energy, but it also makes the film feel scattered, especially once the plot starts sprinting toward a more cartoonish finale.
Bottom line
What lingers is the mood: nasty, glossy, and oddly mournful about the cost of becoming a star. Even when the storytelling slips, the movie keeps finding new ways to be lurid and entertaining. It’s a stylish hangout in a corrupted dream factory, just not a fully satisfying one.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Kit Lazer (2.5★) · 33441 likes
I will not accept a third act I do not deserve.
jeaba (3.5★) · 15866 likes
as someone who loves those hydraulic press videos on tiktok, i was a HUGE fan of that one scene.
YogiLovesFilm (4.5★) · 15554 likes
A Star is Porn
aaron (5★) · 8540 likes
i just think that maxine minx cutting a fat line of coke with her sag card is the absolute pinnacle of cinema
Sydney🚀 (2★) · 8328 likes
It’s not every day you see a film shoot itself in the foot to this degree, where every decision past a certain point is a total head scratcher. The 80s aesthetic and women being targeted by a (real life) serial killer coming off the golden age of porn were right there on a silver platter, but it’s all destroyed in service of a scatterbrained and cartoonish third act that can’t be saved by Mia Goth’s star power or the fun
Themes
ambition, fame and image-making, sex work and exploitation, serial-killer paranoia, Hollywood corruption, identity reinvention, 1980s nostalgia, survival