So when this came out, it got a more mixed reception than the previous two movies in the trilogy (X and Pearl); this review is pretty typical of the ones I read, and its thesis is: “The style remains firmly in place – this time, it’s a lurid look at Los Angeles in the mid-1980s – but there’s nothing underneath it.”

And so I went in expecting that, a basically empty movie that’s just doing ’80s pastiche for style points. But… no, this is absolutely a movie with a lot to say. It’s not in the ‘80s just as a matter of internal chronology or because it’s stylistically cool, it’s using elements from that time period, particularly the Moral Majority stuff and the Satanic panic, as structural elements of its plot and themes.

The whole movie is about religion and Hollywood and how they intersect not only in the culture at large, but also in Maxine’s life. And then too, it ties that in with the themes of the previous movies, about wanting to run from your past and go to the big city… and how you can never completely get away from where you came from.

It’s legitimately good, and right up there with the others in the trilogy. I can see some people not loving it as a horror film — it feels more like a giallo, with a lightly nonsensical murder mystery plot, rather than a traditional slasher; I like gialli, but I can understand slasher fans feeling let down — but I don’t understand the “nothing underneath” criticism at all.

It’s a good, solid movie, and I think a fitting end for this genre- and decade-spanning trilogy.