MaXXXine

Despite her rather florid past, the eponymous porn star (Mia Goth) is determined to make it in the mainstream and seems well on her way when director "Elizabeth Bender" (Elizabeth Debicki) casts her as the lead in the sequel to her own successful first feature. Whilst this is all going on for "Maxine Minx", there is a serial killer on the loose in Los Angeles and the police seem to think that maybe she is involved. Obviously she's not the perpetrator of these vicious acts, but might she somehow be the ultimate target? A rather curious meeting with private eye "Labat" (Kevin Bacon) suggests that she might want to go a mysterious address where she might learn the truth, but she has her own ideas so with the help of her agent/manager/enforcer "Teddy" (Giancarlo Esposito) and a car crusher sets up quite a perilous face-off with a man in black gloves who lives behind a set of green doors. At times this is quite an attitudinal film and Goth does fine, but (no pun intended) Bacon just hams it up too much. Debicki seems totally disinterested in her role and the rest of the cast add very little to a story that is too thinly stretched to pad out one hundred minutes before taking us to a rather weak and rushed denouement. Beware: I sense a sequel might be in the pipe, as if we don't already have enough mediocre slasher fayre on offer already!