MaXXXine

MaXXXine

Writer & Director ~ Ti West

2024, US-UK-NZ

Stars ~ Mia Goth, Charley Rowan McCain, Simon Prast, Kevin Bacon

 

With ‘X’ being a fun ride and, when you realise Mia Goth is doing double-duties, it’s more impressive, and then ‘Pearl’ upping the stakes and reflecting better on its predecessor, expectations for ‘MaXXXine’ were high. Not that they were particularly deep, but West’s the top tier guy for era recreations and some slow burn with more interest in character than most. ‘X’ had a nice, sweaty Seventies horror vibe, superior characterisation, eye-rolling use of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and kills that veered from brutal to lukewarm. ‘Pearl’s recreation of Technicolour escapism/delusion for our unhinged protagonist and Mia Goth’s performance secured a place as cult favourite. There’s not quite the same throughline from ambition to psychosis as Pearl, but Maxine always seemed a tiny bit unhinged to me and that’s why I could see Pearl representing an endpoint of Maxine’s desire for fame.

 

But ‘MaXXXine’ doesn’t really hinge upon the potential danger she may be, except for the moment she stomps out a potential alleyway killer. Rather, the focus is on the threat to her. Or as Christy Lemire says, “MaXXXine” strips her of that spark and renders her a passenger.” She’s already a star in the sex film industry and now it’s the Eighties and she wants more, to be a crossover star. That means starring in an ‘Exorcist’/‘Omen’ derivative sequel called ‘The Puritan II’ in the video era Hollywood in a world of neon nights and sun-bleached days and threat of a serial killer – The Night Stalker. Having long been king of era homage since ‘The House of the Devil’, West delivers a fine Eighties recreation with lots of easter eggs, but it’s not hard to stumble out of bed and find one at the moment: genre odes to Eighties have been trending for a while now. The alley-and-video-store vibe is consummate, and there’s peepshows, giallo leather gloves, the requisite needle drops and TV soundbites, the Bates Motel and Kevin Bacon doing ‘Chinatown’ as he tries to blackmail Maxine. The revelation of the killer, etc, ties back to her history as we know it, but just allows proceedings take a turn into Satanic Panic.

 

The triple-X in the title is a bit of a red herring as we don’t really see this side of Maxine - and that was done in its predecessor anyway. Rather, we get discussion about the period’s hysteria against the genre with monologues by Elizabeth Debicki as a horror sequel director with big ideas and pretentions about “a B-movie with A ideas.” But where ‘X’ made it porn-making characters interesting and subverting their Deserving Victim types, and ‘Pearl’ used cinema to convey the melodrama of delusion and psychosis, ‘MaXXXine’ has no true depth to back up its argument. Indeed, Goth has been off proving more successfully the “A ideas” agenda with Brandon Cronenberg in ‘Infinity Pool’. There’s lots of hints here of more interesting routes that could have been taken.

 

There’s lots of incidental pleasures before the last act veers off into the crazy, but there’s little insight to Maxine’s vacuity, or the cost to her and others with her ruthless ambition. And we learn little more than if there’s a shotgun introduced and some heads are around, there’s going to be an inevitable explosion. As fine as she is, Mia Goth feels like she is being offered less here than previously: or at least, there are few surprises. And that’s the general aftertaste.

 

Kill

Kill

Director ~ Nikhil Nagesh Bhat

Writer ~ Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, Ayesha Syed

2023, India-USA

Stars ~ Lakshya, Raghav Juyal, Tanya Maniktala

Starting out as cheesy and rudimentary as they come: we know he’s the hero because he turns to the camera and gets a musical sting; some “forbidden” love established as she’s getting engaged to another man as daddy says but will only marry him. “Our love is much more powerful than her dad.” Some dodgy dialogue, then they’re all on the train, unaware that a whole extended family of looters have targeted it for a raid. But they haven’t reckoned on Amrit and his pal Viresh, both commandos, equipped and willing to fight back.

Some fisticuffs where we get to see that good use will be made of the limited space, and then having declared it will be taking no prisoners, the film drops the title card seemingly midway through the action and acts like a power-up to berserker mode where all the physical punishment Amrit has taken to date means nothing. But what ‘Kill’ also does is discombobulate the idea that he is an all-out hero: the film keeps flag-poling that the people he is killing are real people; there’s namechecking and a whole lot of grief pouring around. These don’t look like much of a typical bunch of bad guys either, but very much like the extended family types they are. “Who kills like that?” he is asked by the gang’s resident psychopath and troublemaker, who comes with his own daddy issues - a nice turn by Raghav Juyal who has chosen slimy arrogance rather than melodramatic. (Shame the line is tossed off in the trailer to perpetuate how bad ass Amrit is.) For all his doe-eyed and sobby looks, the film is self-aware that a vengeful action protagonist like Amrit is likely a psychopath too.

The more the film goes on, the more uncomfortable his distribution of vengeance is, for however unforgivable they are, the bad guys are a family too. And then what are we to feel about the old ladies indulging in a little vengeance-killing too? For some, the fantasy of vengeance unleashed will be enough, but there’s enough recognition here of humanity that also makes it troubling. The carriage of bad guys corpses hung to intimidate the others would ordinarily just cause fits of rage in antagonists, but here it produces a raw outpouring of grief. It’s this tweak that makes it more than just a series of hollow if impressive set-pieces like ‘John Wick’.

Fights on trains are often highlights, due to the limitations of space and escape. Or you can go on top too, ducking the tunnels mid-punch-up. From Bond below with ‘From Russia with Love’ to Bond on top in ‘Skyfall’, ‘Train to Busan’, ‘John Wick: chapter 2’, Hammer Girl in ‘The Raid 2’, to inevitably ‘Mission: Impossible’. And there’s this Hindi film for which ‘Train to Busan’ meets ‘The Raid’ seems the go-to descriptor and that’s fair, and it’s true that it possesses much of the one-note pummelling of the latter. ‘Kill’ is an instant cult favourite for train melees. “A film a little too pleased with its own ultraviolence,” says Phil de Semlyen, but that’s more a lure for some where it’s meant to be a criticism.

The action starts very early and doesn’t let up. The violence and gore hurt, disgust and lean towards the graphic in a way more akin to horror than typical action. The difference is three too many head-poundings against sinks – at least. It’s not that there’s anything new, but it delivers a few surprises, delivering quirks in geography or bad guy dynamics to keep things interesting until the next time someone reminds Amrit how grief-stricken he is and triggers berserker mode. It’s visceral and hurts where, say, ‘John Wick’ is balletic. The fights veer from the impressive to the occasionally unintelligible with bodies breaking and smashing all over the place in claustrophobic spaces. ‘Kill’ is fun and a little troubling, making for a claustrophobic entertainment of violence with some challenge to your sense of guilt. 

 

A Quiet Place: Day One

A Quiet Place: Day One

Director ~ Michael Sarnoski

Writers ~ Michael Sarnoski, John Krasinski, Bryan Woods

2024, US-UK

Stars ~ Lupita Nyong'o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff

Decent enough and executed well, but a sequel that doesn’t follow the magic ingredient of the originals: prolonged set pieces with monsters. Rather, we get a downbeat narrative led by Deathwish Pizza and anxiety more for a cat than the characters. Came for the monsters and set pieces, but Sarnoski offers a different beast, and that’s commendable enough except it doesn’t seem to realise that all the prior plot holes were forgiven by those set pieces. Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn are strong leads, making it work; the former bringing sadness and dignity to her fatalism and the latter especially bringing an authentic portrayal of a man guided by fear and general decency rather than machismo.

As our investment is in a lead character that is terminally ill, our concern isn’t if but when and how. It becomes not so much about survival, but rather her obstinacy to get a pizza slice across town to recreate happier memories before checking out: it all hinges on whether she gets there. Her fatalism makes her contrarian, and yet she still struggles to stay alive for her pizza moment. Justin Clark writes that it morphs into “a bittersweet tale of what it’s like to genuinely and fully live with a death sentence.” But there’s no evidence of “fully living” when the character is simply surviving an apocalypse, surely. So then it becomes about choosing your moment to die, but this doesn’t quite fit with a monster movie scenario. Or rather, this isn’t the film to unearth a new angle on the subgenre with that mandate. It mostly retreats into movie sentimentality. The alien invasion becomes a manifestation of a fear of death at any moment, or wanting to see the world burn when the terminal illness leaves you with only sadness and anger.

I may go along with the pizza motivation, but I myself am not convinced by the cat: survives near-drowning twice; turns up when narratively convenient, sometimes just disappears; seems atypically unskittish; and I am certain the anarchic, random and wilfully selfish behaviour that cats are known for would have gotten someone, if not everyone, killed. (Indeed, we’ve seen Eric trying to silently, painfully remove a package from a display and that’s the moment that the cat chooses to do its feline jump scare with a loud thud that has no consequences, even though just the ripping of clothing has been shown to summon the aliens). It seems resolutely unbothered by the presence of giant aliens which it would surely catapult away from or rub against, depending upon its mood. Maybe service cats are different. Maybe service cats don’t meow or make noise. Whatever, that is where any cat lover’s anxiety will be.

And if you came for answers to the aliens, or any illumination on their invasion or day one, there isn’t that either. Like the ‘Planet of the Apes’ franchise, ‘A Quiet Place’ has taken a turn for the miserabilism, meaning this is a little low on the fun and thrills to balance the fear and despair.