Well, here's a shock – it turns out we may all have been misusing the word trilogy for decades. Apparently it means 'three distinct works that can be viewed individually or as a whole'. To my mind this means you can discard your notions of the 'Lord of the Rings trilogy', as neither the films nor the traditional three volumes really stand up as individual works of art, as you might expect given that Professor Tolkien wrote the book as a single volume and was only obliged to break it up because of paper rationing in post-war Britain. What you're looking at there, really, is a triptych, or a single work of art in three sections.

There's a tendency these days for ambitious film-makers to get rather excited and explain how their latest project is actually just the first chapter of three, or four, or six; genuine trilogies, where the films can stand alone reasonably comfortably, are somewhat rarer (not to mention the fact that no self-respecting franchise seems to stop at three any more: four Matrix films, four John Wicks, ten Fast squiggle Furiouses, umpty-tump Marvels, and so on).

However, flying the flag for the traditional conception of a trilogy, as opposed to a triptych, is Ti West with his series of X films. I made the effort of watching the first two of these, X and Pearl, as the buzz on the third instalment, MaXXXine, was intriguing and I wanted to know what was going on. But it turns out this really is case where you don't necessarily need to have seen the first two to follow the new one (though it will certainly add something to the experience of watching it).

As before, the film stars Mia Goth (who this time produces as well). Her latest incarnation, as the film begins, is Maxine Minx, an adult movie star looking to break into more mainstream movies in 1985 Hollywood. At the start of the film she is auditioning for a horror sequel, to be directed by steely British film-maker Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki, doing the same accent she used for Princess Diana in The Crown). Years of dedication on Maxine's part seem to be paying off – but then her big break is threatened when she finds herself mixed up in a string of brutal murders, where her friends and acquaintances seem to be being specifically targeted.

Even worse, it seems that someone who knows about her past has tracked her down, sending her mysterious notes and threatening to inform the authorities that she is in fact the sole survivor of what has become known as 'the Texas porn star massacre' (as depicted in X). Her past seems to be catching up with her, bringing with it the odd traumatic flashback. Can she keep it together and take care of business long enough to become the star she knows she deserves to be?

The first two X films were low-budget lockdown hits, made on the same location in New Zealand – the most noticeable thing about MaXXXine is that it is a relatively lavish production, filmed in Hollywood itself, with some genuinely big names involved – most notably Kevin Bacon, who carves himself a thick slice of ham as a sleazy private dick who dogs Maxine's heels for much of the movie. This isn't necessarily a change for the worse but it is certainly a change.

Then again, one of the pleasures of this particular series of films is the way in which the style and tone shift from movie to movie, reflecting films of the period in which they're set. After doing an independent video nasty and a Golden Age psycho-horror, the 80s setting of MaXXXine results in it looking and feeling like a trashy, lurid exploitation thriller.

As a result MaXXXine feels like slightly less of a genuine horror movie than its predecessors did – though there are still some extremely grisly moments along the way, one so graphic it gave me a genuine they-didn't-just-show-that-did-they moment. You could certainly argue that this time West and Goth are pastiching a less distinguished subgenre than before, with less effective results, but most of the things that made X and Pearl two of the most interesting and intelligent genre movies of recent years are still present.

The theme of the connections between sex, violence, and cinema is still there, this time mostly expressed through a plotline about the real-life moral panic of the 1980s – there's a subtext about moral hypocrisy which is not the subtlest thing you will ever see – and the film is as cine-literate and smartly self-referential as ever: Bacon's detective ends up with a bandaged nose, instantly recalling Chinatown, while several scenes take place on the Psycho set on the Universal back lot. At one point we see Maxine crushing out a cigarette on the walk of fame star of Theda Bara, the silent movie actress after whom the alligator in Pearl was named.

Mia Goth carries the movie quite as well as you might expect – one of the amusing parallels going on here is that just as Maxine is hoping to break into the horror genre by doing Debicki's sequel, so Goth must surely be hoping to establish herself as a star outside that same genre by doing... well, a different horror sequel, albeit a rather unusual one. She doesn't seem at all out of place in a scene with Kevin Bacon or Giancarlo Esposito. (Someone in the legitimate press described her as a 'gifted genre actress', which seems to me to reek of snobbery.)

In the end MaXXXine doesn't have the revelatory central performance of Pearl or the pulverisingly horrible impact of X, so perhaps inevitably it feels like it's not quite up to the same standard as either of them. But it's still an immensely interesting film in the way it deconstructs itself and explores the nature of its own genre, and it's made with real class and wit. Some people are calling this the end of the trilogy, but I'm sure that West and Goth can find other interesting places to take this concept. Very few genre movies are as original and rewarding as this series.

Also Showing. . .

. . . Fly Me to the Moon, directed by Greg Berlanti – possibly most of interest as a star vehicle for Scarlett Johansson as she attempts the transition to the next phase of her career (already? I remember watching her films when she was a teenager). This takes the form of a 60s-set rom-com where she plays a grifter hired by Woody Harrelson's government spook to publicise the Apollo programme, rather to the chagrin of straight-arrow NASA flight director Channing Tatum, who nevertheless feels an undeniable attraction to her.

Well, not just another space programme movie but another entry in that odd and diverse subgenre of films exploring the idea that the moon landings were faked. Including this hoary canard in a movie which also incorporates the Apollo I fire as a plot point eventually results in a film which is overlong, tonally uneven, morally dubious and not very funny. Johansson, who is heavily favoured, is reasonably good, but there is little discernible chemistry between her and Tatum. This is a movie with the message that the truth is something important and precious and worth protecting – but which cheerfully writes well-known figures like Gene 'Failure is not an option' Kranz out of history. A pretty bad film anyway you cut it.

Awix

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