I will not accept a life I do not deserve.

Maxxxine is the final film in Ti West’s X trilogy, a trilogy of films that began with X. X had Mia Goth playing double duty as both Maxine Minx, an up-and-coming adult entertainer, and Pearl, a murderous elderly woman living with her equally murderous husband on a farm in Texas. The second film in the series was a prequel, Pearl, that harkened back to the glorious technicolor days of early cinema and had Goth playing a much younger Pearl who discovers her violent tendencies. Maxxxine, the final film, takes place after the events of X and has Goth attempting to break out of adult films and into major motion pictures.

There’s a cohesive throughline in each one of these films, and that’s fame. In X, Maxine is destined for stardom. Sure, she may just be a stripper by day and an adult actress by night, but she’s a star. She knows she’s a star and she’s not going to let anyone get in her way. Not her conservative pastor father, not her creepy director boyfriend, and certainly not a couple of old horned-up kooks hell-bent on killing each and every member of her film’s production. Pearl dives deeper into this, with Goth giving her best performance of the series. Pearl is a young girl, the daughter of German immigrants, who must stay at home to take care of her ailing father and lives under the thumb of an abusive mother. Pearl eventually takes a full-on psychopath turn, killing every member of her family and then lovingly embracing her husband as he returns home from World War 1.

Maxxxine is much larger and bolder in scope than both films that came before and that is as much to its benefit as it is to its detriment. X and Pearl both share the same location, a gorgeous large plantation that looks like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre house in X and the Gone with the Wind plantation in Pearl. Maxxxine puts Mia Goths Maxine Minx in Hollywood during the early 80s. Right at the height of the Nightstalker’s reign of terror and Hollywood’s turn to low-budget high-profit teen slasher flicks.

The world Maxine inhabits is elegant and an almost perfect capture of its time period. The whole film doesn’t feel like a period piece, it feels like they went back to the 80’s and shot this thing. That’s high praise for the director, but not undeserved. He was able to capture the grimy 70’s and golden age of cinema near perfectly in both X and Pearl respectively. Here the scope is much bigger but the execution is just as flawless.

The only downside I really have with Maxxxine is its reliance on knowledge of the previous films, but I think for most fans that won’t be a problem. X ends with a twist revelation that Maxine, the for-profit fornicator, is the daughter of a fire and brimstone televangelist. One who goes on TV weekly to lament the loss of his daughter to the evils of stardom. That reveal plays heavily into Maxxxine and if you’ve got that twist in your mind entering the theater, the reveals and plot twists all kind of fall flat. There are mysteries and red herrings galore, but if you’ve been paying attention to the trilogy so far, they really are nothing more than just background noise to Maxine’s story.

That’s not the worst problem but it does make Maxxxine the least satisfying film in the trilogy for long-time fans and also the most approachable for new ones. Outside of the predictable plot reveals, the film is filled with beautiful and smart homages to 80’s slasher flicks. The first-person killer shots, the stretching alley chase sequences, and the slowly dwindling numbers of each member in Maxine’s crew all feel straight out of a Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th.

Mia Goth plays a fantastic final girl in both X and Maxxxine, but her performance in Maxxxine is so much more. She turns the idea of a final girl on its ear, making her not just the hero we are all rooting for, but a true star in the horror genre. Her performance here is so muted and contained when compared to her role in Pearl. In Pearl Goth is cranking everything up to eleven, playing a woman who desperately wants fame but can never achieve it. Watching the dream of stardom slip further and further away along with her sanity until it boils over into one of the best performances I’ve seen in quite a long time. The academy is far too uppity to give a nomination, let alone an Oscar to a film like Pearl, but film critics agreed that Goth’s performance in Pearl was the best of the year. Here she is calm, cool, and collected. Maxine can see fame, almost taste it. And that’s her major driving motivator throughout the film. She is steadfast and determined in her resolve and she never lets anyone, not even herself, get in the way of it.

In a worse film, this would make Maxine a poor main character. Her friends die all around her and it’s not until the killings start to interfere with her newly landed major motion picture role that she finally decides to fight back. Goth could have come off as heartless or callous but instead, we see her as a fighter. She’s already lost all of her friends once, so she isn’t shocked when it begins to happen again. The truth is Maxine doesn’t have any friends. Doesnt have any family. She has co-workers, acquaintances, but throughout the film, she puts them aside to pursue her dream of stardom. She will not accept a life she does not deserve.

The other performances in the film, though brief, are noteworthy. Halsey does an excellent job playing a Los Angeles stripper with a thick New York accent and Kevin Bacon is having a blast absolutely chewing the scenery with every scene he’s in. It’s also great to see Giancarlo Esposito take a break from playing stone-faced psychopaths and have fun in a smaller bit role. Michelle Monaghan is also a standout as the detective trying to catch the killer terrorizing young girls around Los Angeles.

Maxxxine certainly isn’t an ensemble film, but there are a lot more characters here than we saw in Pearl. Pearl was almost a one-woman show, with Goth owning every scene, barely letting others around her speak. Here, Goth’s performance is front-facing, but also in the background. It’s not just a parallel to her character in Pearl but to the entire X saga. We see the determination it takes to succeed in fame and the desperation that causes it to slip away. Goth embodies both perfectly and Maxxxine stands out as an excellent end to West’s gruesome trilogy. I give a Maxxxine a strong 8 and now I want to rank Maxxxine against the other films in Ti West’s trilogy.

Number 3 for me is Pearl. I know this will be a controversial take and I just spent the last five minutes praising Goth’s performance in the film and while I do absolutely love it, I feel like the highs of Pearl never match the highs of X or Maxxxine. Goth’s performance in Pearl is her best in the series, that’s not up for debate, but with such a limited scope for the film and the prequel’s heavy reliance on nods to X, the film for me fails to capture the magic of X and Maxxxine.

The second in my ranking is Maxxxine. Maxxxine is a great film and is my favorite time period setting of the three but there are some things about Maxxxine that keep it just shy of the top spot. The killer in Maxxxine isn’t revealed until the very end and the reveal is a bit disappointing after all the red herrings and misdirections. The reveal is easy to see coming and that just makes the red herrings all the more frustrating.

Lastly, number one is X. X is the Avengers Endgame of the trilogy and it came first in the series. Pearl is an incredible origin story of the crazed Thanos-level threat to Maxine’s rise to stardom and Maxxxine is a satisfying conclusion to her journey to the top but X is where her star shines brightest. The dilapidated Texas home, the sexy nods to the adult entertainment industry, and the battle between the Goths are pure cinema joy. Mia Goth perfectly nails her double-duty assignment in this film and X never slows down once it gets rolling. It is currently my favorite film of the series but I have a feeling this ranking will change through the years as I continue to watch this excellent film trilogy.

If you want more film analysis check out our other longer podcast and series Create/Context. In August we are talking about 1993’s Super Mario Bros movie and how its inspiration came from Bladerunner and Mad Max instead of its video game namesake. Thanks again for hanging out and I’ll see you next time.