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Ti West and Mia Goth return with the final installation of the X trilogy, MaXXXine. Set during the period of 1980s, the film revolves around Maxine Minx’s journey from the adult entertainment industry to good old Hollywood. The only surviving member of the Texas massacre, Maxine was a headstrong girl determined to become a superstar, but someone was not happy with her progress. Visually, Ti West brings the 80s nostalgia to life. The bold colors, the punk fashion, the right-wing extremists campaigning against heavy metal, the home-video style footage, and the hunt for the Night Stalker taking over prime-time news—the first few minutes of MaXXXine are exciting. But unlike his previous works, X and Pearl, West fails to surprise this time. It is all too predictable, mediocre, and overall disappointing.

Spoiler Alert

Why were Maxine’s friends attacked?

With the Night Stalker on the loose, people were advised...

Warning: This article contains spoilers for MaXXXine (2024).

The Puritan II in MaXXXine draws inspiration from classic religious horror movies like The Omen and The Exorcist, adding an eerie touch. MaXXXine highlights protests against horror movies in the '80s, mirroring real-life outrage over satanic content in media. Realistic elements in MaXXXine, like references to true crimes and protests against horror, create a gritty and grounded horror story.

The in-universe movie The Puritan II helps shape the setting of MaXXXine by highlighting a divisive horror movie era in Hollywood. MaXXXine concludes A24 and Ti Wests horror movie trilogy, following Maxine Minx as she tries to break into mainstream show business. After many auditions, Maxine finally gets cast in The Puritan II, but her past threatens to derail her career when murders start happening all around her. When watching MaXXXine, its easy to mistake The Puritan II for a real horror movie.

The following contains spoilers for MaXXXine, now playing in theaters

MaXXXine has over a dozen deaths, with some off-screen and others on-screen, showcasing various levels of brutality. Some of the deaths, like Leon and Detective Torres, are among the film's sadder moments. The villains suffers brutal on-screen deaths, especially Kevin Bacon's John Labat.

MaXXXine has some pretty brutal deaths, but there's a few that stand out from the rest. The third chapter in Ti West's X series, MaXXXine brings back Mia Goth's Maxine Minx from 2022's X. Set in 1985, the aspiring actress finds her big break at the same time a mysterious investigator finds her. While Maxine tries to deal with the dangers posed by this private investigator and his mysterious client, the people in Maxine's orbit start getting picked off in brutal fashion. While some deaths that occur by MaXXXine's ending aren't shown, their aftermath highlights...

Elizabeth Debicki says starring in 'MaXXXine' was a "medical palate cleanser" following her portrayal of Princess Diana in 'The Crown'.The 33-year-old actress plays Elizabeth Bender in the third film in Ti West's 'X' horror series and admits that the role provided a refreshing contrast to her part as the tragic royal in the popular Netflix series.Elizabeth told Forbes: "I shot this quite soon after 'The Crown' and I found it to be a very medical palate cleanser."The 'Night Manager' actress explained the 1980s set film had one of the most impressive scripts that she has ever read and revealed how most of West's screenplay ended up in the finished picture.Debicki said: "To be honest, when I read the script – and honestly, I've read a lot of things in the last year and a half – I found it was one of the...

Warning: This article includes Major Spoilers for MaXXXine (2024).

MaXXXine is a B-movie with A ideas, combining campy style with well-developed characters and relevant themes. The film explores exploitation thriller elements with a modern spin, promoting sex work and questioning religious leaders' behavior. MaXXXine's plot highlights the impact of accessible information about a person's past on their chance at fame.

The movie MaXXXine includes one quote that perfectly describes the last installment in director Ti Wests horror trilogy. Two years after X and Pearl, the conclusion to A24s has released in theaters, bringing a lot of hype. As an avid horror fan, I went into MaXXXine with high expectations. X is one of my favorite horror movies, and Mia Goth has incredible acting skills that can carry even the weakest movie. Luckily, the latest film by Ti West didnt disappoint. MaXXXine is one of the best horror movies of 2024 so far,...

After taking on the tragic tale of the people’s princess, Elizabeth Debicki found just the part to shake things up.

The Golden Globe winner opened up about going from her critically-acclaimed performance on Netflix‘s The Crown to starring in MaXXXine, the concluding chapter of Ti West‘s X horror trilogy that is now playing in theaters.

“I shot this quite soon after wrapping on The Crown and I found it to be a very medicinal palate cleanser,” Debicki told Forbes.

She previously won a Golden Globe for her performance as the late Princess of Wales in seasons 5 and 6 of The Crown after taking over the role from Emma Corrin.

In MaXXXine, Debicki plays director Elizabeth Bender, who gives Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) her big break in the horror sequel The Puritan II. While fulfilling her dreams, the young starlet must outrun her sinister past while the Night Stalker preys on 1980s Los Angeles.

On July 5, 2024, A24 released “MaXXXine,” a slasher film written, directed, produced and edited by Ti West that has Mia Goth reprising her role as Maxine Minx in the third installment of the “X” franchise. Certified fresh with a score of 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, critics were thrilled by the thriller.

In this go-around, Maxine pursues her dream of becoming a famous actress while trying to avoid the Night Stalker in 1985. The ensemble cast includes Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Halsey, Bobby Cannavale, Lily Collins, Kevin Bacon and Giancarlo Esposito. Read our full review round-up below.

See 2024 box office hits: Every movie that made more than $100 million

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian writes, “Director Ti West goes three for three, serving up a horribly watchable new episode in his outrageous black-comic franchise of aspirational horror porn, this time set in 80s Hollywood.” Adding, “But the film is almost stolen by the...

Ti West’s “MaXXXine” has slashed its way into theaters. And the third film in the trilogy that began with 2022’s “X” and continued with the prequel “Pearl,” is perhaps the installment most steeped in other movies. This is a movie where, when a character is threatening Maxine (Mia Goth), the porn star that survived the events of “X” and now, circa “MaXXXine” is struggling to make it in mainstream Hollywood in 1985, they send her a newspaper clipping with the headline: “The Texas Porn Star Massacre,” a direct reference to Tobe Hooper’s immortal “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”

And that’s just the beginning of the metatextual delights that make “MaXXXine” so special. We thought that we’d talk about five of the movies that fundamentally inspired “MaXXXine.”

Since we’ll be talking about plot specifics, consider this your mild spoiler warning before we get into it.

“Psycho” (1960) Universal Pictures...

Despite not fully understanding the term "Scream Queen," Mia Goth expresses her gratitude for the love and support she has received from the horror community. Goth stars in the newly released slasher film MaXXXine.

In an interview with the Collider, the actress opened up about embracing her horror genre fans. I dont really know what a Scream Queen means. I never really use that term for other actresses. Ive definitely heard it a lot in passing, and I know that sometimes they describe me like that. I guess it just means an actress thats working in the horror genre. Its tricky. I dont really know how to talk about that because, on one hand, I feel so embraced by the horror community and the genre community in general, and its something that I really welcome, and Im really grateful for, that X and Pearl and MaXXXine, in particular, have resonated...

MaXXXine marks the conclusion to Ti West’s improbably horror trilogy (although MaXXXine is much more a thriller than horror). It began with X‘s release in 2022, followed by Pearl later in the same year – the two films were shot back-to-back in secret. Both movies proved to be hits, so fans were delighted when the first teaser trailer dropped for MaXXXine in September, soon after Pearl’s premiere. Exceptional marketing is one with, but how does writer-director Ti West sew up the trilogy?

Mia Goth in MaXXXine (2024)

MaXXXine Plot

Six years after the events of X, Maxine Minx has made a name for herself in the adult film industry, but she has her sights set on stardom in mainstream Hollywood. Set against the backdrop of 1985 Los Angeles, the skeletons from Maxine’s past threaten to come back and destroy everything she’s worked for, all while also contending with the...

She lived through what newspapers dubbed “The Texas Porn Star Massacre,” a long, dark, Type O-splattered night of the soul that left her fellow purveyors of quality adult entertainment outlined in chalk. Now Maxine Miller — better known by her stage name Maxine Minx — must endure an environment so horrific, so murderous that her chances of survival are likely less than zero: the world of big-time Hollywood moviemaking. MaXXXine is a lot of things: a tribute to ’80s slasher flicks, an affectionate recreation (and reclamation) of vintage sleaze, the end of...

(L-r) Mia Goth as Maxine and Halsey as Tabby, in Maxxxine. Photo Credit: Justin Lubin. Courtesy of A24

Director Ti West and actor Mia Goth are back with a third film in the X horror series. Maxxxine is a sequel to 2022’s X, while the second in the series, Pearl (also 2022), was a prequel. The first film, X, was a surprise hit at SXSW with audiences and critics, a kind of fun, tongue-in-cheek homage to both horror and porno films of the late 1970s and early 1980s, where the owner of a strip joint and his pals set out in make a porno film titled “The Farmers’ Daughters” at a rural house they have rented from an elderly couple, but without telling the old folks what kind of film they are making. Mia Goth plays in dual roles as one of the actresses in the porno, Maxine, and the elderly farm wife,...

This article contains massive spoilers for "MaXXXine."

If you want to know the real history of Hollywood in all of its dreamlike, terrible, grimy beauty, you would do well to study the horror film. It's the genre where many pillars of the film industry get their start and one that comments on the darkest aspects of human nature and filmmaking itself without fear of overstepping. Think of Wes Craven's "Scream" quartet: not only do all four films make blatant comments on the contemporary state of the industry, but "Scream 3" even features a character who, in hindsight, is a thinly-veiled version of serial assaulter Harvey Weinstein, an executive producer on the film. The calls were coming from inside the house.

Being a horror movie fan involves not just things like separations of art from the artist, but varying gradations of morality, with so many ethical questions constantly at the forefront of these films.

“A B-movie with A-movie ideas.” That is how an eminently driven, and fictional, film director describes the horror movie sequel she’s developing in MaXXXine. Yet Ti West’s assertion through her will be lost on no one walking into this third triumphant installment of the decade’s most unlikely franchise. What began as a lean and mean throwback to ‘70s independent sleaze in all its shadings—from the grindhouse to the porno shop—has turned into a tryptic of longing and ambition, love for cinema’s power and anguish at beholding the full desolation its legacy can bring. When the trilogy concludes this Fourth of July weekend, it will even count Martin Scorsese among its admirers.

That’s a lot of weight to be placed onto what is still in its heart of scuzzy hearts a lurid genre offering with enough gore to fill a Bates Motel shower. It...

In releasing his ‘X’ trilogy, Ti West has delivered three very powerful, yet different films that have each left an indellible mark on horror and modern cinema more widely.

With MaXXXine, the grand finale of this project, West takes us on a visceral journey through 1980s Hollywood, weaving a tale that is as much a slasher as it is a critique of the very industry it depicts. This third installment sees Mia Goth reprise her role as Maxine Minx, the ambitious survivor from X, now thrust into the glitzy yet perilous world of Los Angeles.

Set in 1985, MaXXXine opens with a montage that situates us firmly in the cultural milieu of the period, a time of moral panic, sensationalist media, and the burgeoning home video market. Clips of Ronald Reagan pontificating about American values juxtapose with news reports on the ‘Night Stalker’ and the satanic panic, creating an atmosphere thick with paranoia and fear.

Your browser does not support the video tag. MaXXXine is set in 1980s Hollywood, where adult film star Maxine Minx pursues her dream of becoming a movie star while a serial killer, the Night Stalker, hunts for his next victim. The film explores the neo-noir genre and features a star-studded cast, including Elizabeth Debicki, Kevin Bacon, Giancarlo Esposito, Lily Collins, and Mia Goth reprising her role as Maxine. Debicki and Bacon discuss their characters and performances, while Debicki highlights the importance of female bonding and the challenges faced by women in Hollywood during the 1980s.

MaXXXine takes place 6 years after the 1979 massacre in Texas. Maxine still dreams of being a movie star and is poised on the edge of her big break, starring in a horror movie sequel. While she faces the struggles that come with transitioning from adult entertainment into Hollywood, an extremely dangerous serial killer known as the...

MaXXXine: Release Date & How To Watch The Third Installment In The X Franchise ( Photo Credit – Instagram )

Maxine Minx is back to pursue her Hollywood dreams, but little does she know that another serial killer awaits her. This is the premise of MaXXXine, the third instalment in the X franchise, which is all set to hit the screens soon.

The slasher film is a direct sequel to X (2022), which followed Maxine, an aspiring adult actress, as she was hunted by a serial killer in rural Texas. Its prequel, Pearl, was also released in 2022, and both films became box-office successes.

How to Watch MaXXXine? Release Date Explored

MaXXXine is going to be released in theaters on Friday, July 5th, 2024. The film will be shown exclusively in cinemas, so the big screen is your only option if you want to watch the film in the upcoming days. The R-rated film has a runtime of 1 hour and 44 minutes.

Christmas has come early for genre fans this year with the release of MaXXXine, the third and perhaps not-so-final part of a horror trilogy that began in 2022 with X, a splatterfest set in the ’70s porn industry. Mia Goth was director Ti West’s leading lady, playing both Maxine Mink, the leading lady of the skinflick being made (The Farmer’s Daughters), and her crazy old nemesis, Pearl, who most violently objects to the goings on at her and her husband’s respectable Texas farmstead. For the second film, Pearl — a near-instant prequel — Goth resumed the title role, but in the latest, and for now the last, she reverts to Maxine Mink.

In the neon-lit, Hi-nrg world of MaXXXine, Maxine, it transpires, has escaped the notorious “Texas Porn-Shoot Massacre” without a scratch to her rep, and is about to embark on a legitimate acting career in a mid-range Hollywood horror film,...

When we last saw Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) in Ti West’s X, the adult film actress with Machiavellian designs on Hollywood superstardom had just killed Pearl (also Goth), the deranged, elderly killer of all her friends. In MaXXXine, she’s pushing 33 and still grinding in the dregs of the adult entertainment world in L.A., but her savvy agent, Teddy Night (Giancarlo Esposito), snags her a supporting role in a buzzy new slasher film, The Puritan II, to be directed by the Dorothy Arzner-esque star screenwriter Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki).

No spotlight in Hollywood, though, is bright enough to eradicate the grime of Maxine’s past. Following the template set by another icon of the industry’s infancy, Joan Crawford, our heroine’s dirty secrets become weaponized against her. A menacing stranger clad in taut, rippling leather (shades of Cruising) sics his goon (Kevin Bacon) on her, sends...

Elizabeth Debicki has been in several high-profile roles in the past few years, some including roles in Netflix's hit political drama The Crown, Christopher Nolan's Tenet, and James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy. Of the latter, Debicki had nothing but praise and revealed what surprised her most about the famous superhero trilogy.

Speaking with Collider, Elizabeth Debicki shared how taken aback she was by the complex sets in James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. The actress appeared in the second and third installments of the trilogy, and she played Ayesha, the High Priestess of the Sovereign. Ayesha was an imposing leader and hires the Guardians in Vol. 2 to protect valuable batteries, and turns against them as Rocket steals some of them. In Vol. 3, she appears as Will Poulter's Adam Warlock's mother.

Related 'Gift That Keeps on Giving': Karen Gillan Reflects on Nebula's MCU...

MaXXXineImage: A24

The ‘80s have a reputation as a decade of excess, a quality MaXXXine embraces to a fault: The third installment in Ti West’s trilogy of loosely connected slasher-ish horror movies has the unfocused enthusiasm of a coked-up producer throwing out ideas at a party. It could be,...

Ti West's pulpy 1980s sequel Maxxxine lets Mia Goth be a fucking star. The third film in West’s X trilogy is a sinful sendup to Regan-era Satanic Panic protests against Hollywood, aligning Maxine Minx’s Tinsletown escapades with the Night Stalker’s crime spree. Influences from Italian giallos to Jack Shoulder’s Los Angeles setups create an A+ aesthetic, the same as VHS-era “Video Nasties” paranoia, but adversely, certain themes are never fully incorporated. Maxxxine strikes its poses, cracks some skulls, and gets unexpectedly goofy, yet its pastiche sometimes feels skin-deep. West tries to have it all between Maxine’s crescendo, knife-to-throat depravity, and filmmaking commentaries, only to undersell competing features due to overstuffed ambitions.

The year is 1985. Women are being slaughtered in Los Angeles by a serial killer at large, and Maxine Minx couldn’t care less. She’s focused on one goal: graduate from adult pictures to Hollywood stardom.

It’s the summer of 1985 in Los Angeles, California, and adult film star Maxine Minx is ready for the big time. Having made it out of the sleazy peep shows and grindhouse theaters alive, Maxine now has her sights set on legitimate movie stardom. Director Ti West’s latest, MaXXXine, finds the bold and ambitious star landing a role that could change everything—a major part in the new horror film The Puritan II.

But dark forces threaten to ruin Maxine’s dreams of making it big. A sadistic serial killer known as the Night Stalker is prowling the streets of Hollywood, murdering young women in the dead of night. And as the body count rises, two skeptical detectives are zeroing in on Maxine, convinced she knows more than she’s letting on. With danger lurking around every corner, Maxim will need to fight tooth and nail to survive both...

In a music video for the mischievous pop album “Brat,” Charli Xcx surrounds herself with a specific breed of hot girl. Julia Fox. Rachel Sennott. Chloe Cherry of “Euphoria” fame. They’ve all got that special something, an almost feral sense of self-actualization and sexiness that’s known to the Extremely Online as the essence of Brat Girl Summer.

“It’s definitely a je ne sais quoi kind of situation,” the singer-songwriter explains to her cunty cohort in the “360” music video.

“I would say it’s about being really hot in a scary way,” agrees one of the featured brats before another chimes in to say, “You have to be known, but at the same time unknowable.”

Brattiness as an aesthetic has taken over music, memes, and fashion in recent weeks through a flood of bleached eyebrows, neon green nail polish, and curse word-emblazoned tube tops. The micro movement has...

If knives weren’t already being sharpened for Ti West prior to MaXXXine––the third installment in his X series of exploitation throwbacks––they likely will be at the ready once discerning horror fans experience it. On the surface, this is West returning to the same bloody ground as his terrific 2009 breakout The House of the Devil, only with a much starrier cast in tow for this 1985-set slasher mystery. Like that movie, the backdrop here is Reagan-era Satanic Panic, a fitting bedfellow for a story that begins in the adult entertainment industry––that other key scourge for social conservatives in the decade that style forgot. Wider ties between The House of the Devil and MaXXXine, beyond their shared cultural contexts, are few and far between, yet it’s hard not to regard this movie as something of a self-aware victory lap for its director; West isn’t just...

The 1980s were a heyday for Hollywood horror movies thanks to a slasher boom generating a roster of icons, sexy vampires like "The Lost Boys" and "Fright Night," and movies like "The Shining" that appeal to audiences beyond the Real Sickos. But never fear, Sicko Cinema was alive and well throughout the decade, even if your average movie fan isn't familiar with Gary Sherman's "Vice Squad," Katt Shea's "Stripped to Kill," or Robert Vincent O'Neil's "Angel." These were films that were given exponentially smaller budgets and focused on communities deemed too risqué or taboo for the status quo. Deemed "trashy," "exploitative," or "low-brow," these schlock-fests [complimentary] were some of the last vestiges of explicit, fearlessly envelope-pushing cinematic storytelling. As far as I'm concerned, there's been a void ever since.

Ti West efficiently captured the gritty, naturalistic look and tone of 1970s horror flicks like "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" with "X,...

Ti West’s decades-spanning horror trilogy, which began in the late ’70s with X (2022) and then jumped back over half a century for the same year’s WW1 prequel Pearl, now fast-forwards to the mid-’80s with a capper that requires a little more thought than its gory, crowd-pleasing predecessors. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Reagan years would be West’s safe space, given 2009’s pitch-perfect period piece The House of The Devil, but MaXXXine pulls back on that kind of detail in a way that’s surprising. Despite the obvious genre set-up, which promises way more violence than you’d expect, but is pretty gory when you do get it — West’s film is actually an abstract think-piece about women in cinema, predicated on Bette Davis’s quote: “In this business, until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star.

MaXXXine, directed by Ti West, incorporates real-life serial killer Richard Ramirez to anchor the film in reality and elevate it beyond horror entertainment. Mia Goth and Elizabeth Debicki hint at multiple threads in the movie unraveling in theaters, keeping tight-lipped about Ramirez's role in the film. Ti West compares MaXXXine to Spike Lee's Summer of Sam, emphasizing that Ramirez plays a significant role in the story in an unexpected way.

The third film in director Ti Wests epic X saga, MaXXXine, is almost upon us, and the cast and crew recently gathered to discuss how and why the film incorporates real-life serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker. Hitting theaters on July 5, 2024, MaXXXine is set in Los Angeles circa 1985 and follows the titular character of Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) as she pursues her dreams of becoming a famous Hollywood star, all while evading the maniacal killer while...

With the final installment in Ti West's X trilogy now less than one month away, promotion for the film is picking up with several new looks at different characters. The official A24 X account revealed new character posters for nine characters for MaXXXine, including but not limited to Mia Goth's Maxine Minx, Kevin Bacon's John Labat, Elizabeth Debicki's Elizabeth Bender, and Giancarlo Esposito's Teddy Knight. The film has assembled quite the stacked ensemble for the conclusion of Maxine's story, and fans around the world are eager to see writer/director West's latest feature outing after being absent from theaters in 2023.

The third and final installment in Ti West’s trilogy, A24 will be releasing X and Pearl follow-up MaXXXine in theaters July 5, and a whole bunch of character posters have arrived.

Mia Goth stars in the upcoming MaXXXine alongside Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, Sophie Thatcher, and Kevin Bacon. Meet their characters via the new posters below.

Here’s the full list of character names…

Mia Goth – Maxine Minx Giancarlo Esposito – Teddy Knight Moses Sumney – Leon Green Elizabeth Debicki – Elizabeth Bender Michelle Monaghan – Detective Williams Kevin Bacon – John Labat Halsey – Tabby Martin Lily Collins – Molly Bennett Bobby Cannavale – Detective Torres

[Related] ‘X’ Re-Releasing in Theaters with ‘MaXXXine’ Sneak Peek

Here’s the official plot synopsis from A24 this week: “In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood,...

And, action. A few years back, Ti West and Mia Goth took the horror world by surprise – not with the fact that their slasher team-up X was excellent (West’s work has long been acclaimed), but with the news that, during its production, the pair had devised and shot an imminent prequel, the 1920s-set Pearl. Together, the two films made fascinating companion-pieces – each evoking different eras of filmmaking without holding back on the gore, the scares, and some surprising melancholy undertones. Add in astonishing performances from Goth as both rising porn star Maxine Minx and psycho killer Pearl, and you had an instant double-whammy hit. Now, they’re about to cap it off with X sequel MaXXXine – taking Ms. Minx into 1980s Hollywood. Watch the trailer:

If you’ve caught up on X and Pearl already, this looks like a hugely exciting closing chapter – one firmly leaning into its 1985 setting,...