Just about any movie that’s launched into wide release is bound to set off a slew of internet searches, stemming from curiosity about the actors involved, the locations used, and even the box office returns, but they seldom involve Theda Bara. With a film career that lasted less than two decades, spanning from 1908 through 1926, Bara is credited as one of Hollywood’s earliest sex symbols, despite missing out on the sound era in its entirety. Given that almost her entire filmography went up in smoke in the 1937 Fox vault fire, her reputation and cultural impact have been similarly reduced to ash, the foul black dust that can be found at the end of the cigarette Mia Goth stomps out on her Hollywood Walk of Fame star near the start of MaXXXine. It’s a cheeky passing of the torch from one femme fatale to the next, though its exact calibration between respectful admiration and disaffected kiss-off is difficult to parse. Maxine might be ready to see the past as dust beneath her feet, but the camera sure does linger.

Even more so than its predecessors, X and Pearl, the capper to Goth and writer/director Ti West’s unlikely exploitation horror trilogy is beholden to the past, dutifully hitting its marks and never straying off track. Our quasi-titular heroine certainly knows the playbook, having escaped to Los Angeles after the events of X to become a star of renown in the 1980’s adult entertainment industry, now citing Brooke Shields’ trajectory as a potential path toward further ascendancy. While her notoriety in racier entertainments makes the tinseltown bigwigs reluctant to hand out the big break, the biggest obstacle in her way is a looming, trench-coated phantom known by national media as The Night Stalker. Eager to murder and maim his way through the city of angels, the mysterious figure seems to take a particular shine to our protagonist, who flees and fights her way through one reference-bound attack after another. 

Honoring your cinematic forebears, even to the point of recreation, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it almost always comes with a distancing factor. Having arranged his whole movie as a sort of celluloid hyperlink to titillation of yore, West’s desire to delight the die-hards will likely be cherished by a certain niche, but risks keeping larger audiences at arm’s length. It also robs the proceedings of any real fear factor; genuine fright requires investment, a tall order for anyone who’s hastily noting which 80’s slasher flick just got a shout out before the next one arrives. X also functioned as an extended and specific unveiling of tributes, but had the advantage of being new, where Pearl, the best of the trilogy, was sturdy enough as a character study to stand on its own two feet. MaXXXine lacks the who-will-survive pull of the opening chapter, so when its auxiliary players are dispatched, it feels more mandatory than scintillating, especially when each new persona only exists to prompt yet another grisly homage.

The greater deficit comes in comparison to Pearl, which smartly threw Goth the car keys and abandoned the speed limit. She inhabits a different character this time around, one with decidedly less agency in her own story, primarily reacting against perpetration rather than forwarding it through action. It’s hard to fault West’s decision to share the ball when Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Debicki prove to be such artisans of scene chewery, with smaller roles inhabited by unlikely but winsome performances from Halsey and Moses Sumney. Filling out the frame with surprising or lovably familiar faces isn’t without its charms, but brief appearances from Giancarlo Esposito and Bobby Cannavalle make the entire enterprise feel as if it’s taking place behind a glass wall. Pearl’s hyper-focus on Goth rendered the whole movie in close-up; the events of MaXXXine seem to be taking place in diorama.

If your movie is arranged for display purposes only, it helps to have something handsome on offer, and MaXXXine’s recreation of 1980’s Los Angeles is worth celebrating. Jason Kisvarday’s production design is like a comfy uncanny valley, enticingly stylized and detailed enough to get lost in, like walking through an amusement park that cheekily claims to be another time and place entirely. The same can be said for many of the kill sequences, which are too hyperbolic to upset anyone who’s acclimated to this type of genre fare, but operate on a gonzo frequency that’s skillfully attuned to its midnight movie target audience. There’s plenty to quibble about within MaXXXine, but the gleeful lunacy of an early scene set in an alleyway renders them all moot, if only temporarily.

There’s an unmistakable feeling of letdown when the credits finally roll, but perhaps the aforementioned Bacon is a guiding light to enjoying this trilogy capper. Playing a private eye with a thick southern drawl and a toothy smile that gleams with mischief, the veteran actor is entirely too over-the-top to take seriously, and just as impossible to resist. This type of honey-baked ham has a known recipe, as does everything in MaXXXine, and there’s plenty to cherish within the familiar. There’s also nothing of substance, no leafy green to round out the meal, unless you count studying up on Theda Bara as a form of enrichment. Pastiche is a formidable wall to hide behind, and while West and his collaborators are surely having a ball, it’s hard to make a gruesome horror flick when you have the safety on for the entire runtime.