MaXXXine

To call Ti West’s MaXXXine a half-assed Brian De Palma knockoff would be a disservice to Brian De Palma, knockoffs, and asses.

This is, at best, a 1/16th-assed knockoff, one that references Body Double and The Black Dahlia (plus Paul Schrader's Hardcore), includes split screens, and features a movie within the movie, but offers little in the way of style or a consistent voice. It’s as if someone once told West about these films and techniques, but he never actually watched them.

Like the previous two entries in the writer/director's laborious porn/horror trilogy, MaXXXine opens in promising fashion. Having survived if not quite thrived in Los Angeles for six years after escaping the rural Texas events of X, porn star Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) impressively auditions for the “real” horror film, The Puritan II, followed by a series of darkly funny scenes as the opening credits unfurl, suggesting energetic times await.

Instead, also like X and the embarrassing Pearl, West reveals pretty much all of his tricks early, leaving little of note for the rest of the film on a stylistic level, and certainly not on a narrative one. As Maxine’s past comes back to haunt her, Goth again proves not up to the challenge of carrying a film and none of the supporting characters are developed beyond a single trait.

Kevin Bacon and Giancarlo Esposito occasionally spice things up as sleazy New Orleans private eye John Labat and Maxine’s manager Teddy Night, but their eccentric shenanigans likewise feel one-note and turns by Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Lily Collins end just as their characters are starting to grow compelling.

Meanwhile, turns by Michelle Monaghan and especially Bobby Cannavale as LAPD cops investigating the Night Stalker murders are truly humiliating, the victim of West’s inability to combine his serial killer and satanic panic subplots into noteworthy conflicts.

Elsewhere, a handful of violent, gross-out scenes play somewhat effectively, in part because they feel out of place within MaXXXine’s otherwise lifeless tempo. Eli Roth is thanked in the end credits and could very well have guest directed those moments, or at least advised on their cartoonish execution.

Other attempts at scares (with and without musical stings) fall flat, and West still can't properly light a scene to save his life, more often than not leaving his actors in frustrating, unintentional shadows. It all builds to a chaotic yet ultimately tame climax that definitively shows the filmmaker has little worthwhile to say.

Grade: C-minus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, the Fine Arts Theatre, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: A24)