Mia Goth in MaXXXine (A24)

Ti West’s “X” trilogy has managed to set itself apart from other entries in the slasher genre by combining old-school horror filmmaking with the various genres of Hollywood’s past. X was a Texas Chainsaw–inspired ode to 1970s grindhouse and sexploitation B-movies; its prequel Pearl cloaked the birth of a serial killer in a 1950s technicolor melodrama; and now MaXXXine offers a throwback to the long-revered era of exaggerated 1980s horror. While the latest entry successfully ties up any loose ends remaining in West’s story, it also must contend with being the least scary film of the trilogy.

Part of that issue is that however creepy MaXXXine becomes, it never really presents itself as a horror film. Instead, West frames the next chapter in the life of Maxine Minx (a returning Mia Goth) as a gritty crime thriller, full of all the sleaze, drugs, Satanic panic hysteria, and black comedy that one might expect to find in 1985 Los Angeles. But you don’t need to watch X and Pearl to get into it. By this point, details of Maxine’s encounter with serial killer couple Pearl and Howard in X—as well as the death of her boyfriend, porno co-stars, and production crew—have been confined to police evidence lockup in Texas. Now far away from the Lone Star state, Maxine hopes to reinvent her life, specifically, a change in genres, switching from starring in porn shoots to Hollywood moviemaking so she can debut as a mainstream star.

Luckily, she earns that big break, winning a lead role in the upcoming horror sequel The Puritan II, helmed by hard-nosed director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki). A satanic-themed horror movie starring an ex-adult film star incenses the Moral Majority–type protesters picketing all around Hollywood. Nevertheless, Bender sees something in Maxine and expects her to deliver. And LA is already on shaky ground. Besides the real-life Night Stalker terrorizing the city, another murderer is afoot, killing and branding women with pentagram insignias and putting him in the crosshairs of detectives Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale), who quickly deduce the victims’ connection to Maxine. And this meeting of past and present horror could threaten to upend her Hollywood career before it even begins.

Of course, if you watch MaXXXine’s opening, or even think back on X’s lone unanswered plot thread, the killer’s identity isn’t all that mysterious. Nor does the film get as crazy with its onscreen murders as one would expect given its setting, when the slasher subgenre was at its peak. Or rather, the few we get are delightfully gory, but there aren’t that many of them. Maybe it’s a consequence of the movie’s large A-list cast. Not just the aforementioned Debicki, but a Southern-twanged Kevin Bacon as a sleazy private investigator, Moses Sumney as Maxine’s video store friend Leon, Giancarlo Esposito as her Saul Goodman–esque agent, and Lilly Collins as a fellow movie star, among many more. All of whom help frame Tinseltown as glamorous and deceitful in an era West and cinematographer Elliot Rockett re-create in gleefully grainy, synthesized detail. Yet the movie never goes full-in horror, and that feels like a missed opportunity.

What keeps MaXXXine operating at full steam is Goth, who owns Maxine’s “take no shit” Final Girl status to the point that she straddles the line between heroine and anti-hero, which feels quite appropriate seeing how Goth played hero and villain in the previous trilogy entries. Maxine’s a survivor who keeps things close to her chest, but she isn’t afraid to go to some dark places. Or even take pleasure in them, as seen by Maxine’s cathartic-yet-sexually-perverse approach to dealing with a mugger. Still, there are glimpses of vulnerability, subtly conveying why she pursues an isolated life off-camera. Goth is, in a fitting manner for this story, movie star material.

And stardom is key to MaXXXine’s entire aesthetic. West knows his Hollywood eras, and this is a tale drenched in callbacks to all forms of late-20th century show business. Be it the Psycho mansion or a Rambo knife or the sight of Bacon running around with a Chinatown bandage around his nose, most cinephiles will recognize the winks and nods. If anything, it’s the allure of fame and the dirty nature of the acting business that inspires far more unsettling vibes than the murders themselves. But murders are very much what fans of the “X” trilogy came to see. In that regard, MaXXXine could afford to be just a bit more excessively ’80s.