Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for 'MaXXXine'.

In an era where studios seem desperate to mine potential franchises out of any reasonable hit project, Ti West and Mia Goth created one of the most unique movie trilogies in recent memory. X may be an original work, but classic slasher films deeply inform its 1970s narrative, particularly Tobe Hooper and his work on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Similarly, the film’s prequel, Pearl, referenced some of Hollywood’s most beloved “Golden Age” films, most notably The Wizard of Oz. The final installment in West’s trilogy, MaXXXine, plays out as an extended tribute to the groundbreaking work of Brian De Palma.

De Palma was among the group of influential directors like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola that initiated the “New Hollywood” era in the 1970s. While De Palma’s aptitude for stories of suspense and intrigue often drew comparisons to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, he created stylistic flourishes such as split screens and sharp panning that were entirely his own. Many of De Palma’s innovations became ingrained into modern filmmaking. However, the direct references to De Palma’s classics in MaXXXine indicate that West has respect for this “master of suspense.”

'MaXXXine' Is an Homage to the Films of Brian De Palma

MaXXXine takes the franchise into the mid-1980s, an era where De Palma was at his peak as a director. While some of his earlier work had only been appreciated on cult film circuits, De Palma was successful in breaking into the mainstream through his bold, albeit controversial thrillers. De Palma kicked off the most productive decade of his career with the 1980 masterpiece Dressed to Kill, a psychosexual thriller that merges elements of the whodunit genre with death sequences taken straight out of a slasher thriller. This is a description that could also apply to MaXXXine; although Maxine herself is eluding the killer that claims to be “The Night Stalker,” there are more than a few spooky sequences that play out like a traditional slasher flick.

MaXXXine was bold in how it depicts the adult film industry, a subject that Hollywood has often been hesitant about shedding a spotlight on in major productions. This was the subject of De Palma’s groundbreaking 1984 thriller Body Double, which survived polarizing reviews to become a cult classic.Body Double is certainly a work of exploitation, but it also offers a frank depiction of the realities of adult entertainment that doesn’t pass judgment on working professionals. This becomes the crux of Maxine’s story arc in MaXXXine. While she is not ashamed of working on low-budget pornographic films as she did in X, Maxine struggles to ensure that the industry itself treats her with the respect that she deserves. Maxine’s first meeting with the filmmaker Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) is itself framed as an extended tracking shot that sparks comparison to the similar opening in Body Double.

'MaXXXine' Recreates Some Iconic De Palma Moments

De Palma and West are both great filmmakers because they understand the parameters of the industry, and are willing to dig into its darker side. In De Palma’s classic political thriller Blow Out,John Travolta’s character begins looking at evidence of a politically motivated assassination by scouring through footage using rudimentary editing technology. He uses the skills of a filmmaker to help solve a crime. West utilizes a similar concept in MaXXXine when his titular character discovers that her past has been well documented. After the enigmatic killer sends her tapes of The Farmer’s Daughter, the pornographic film that she was filming in X, Maxine realizes that she is specifically being targeted.

MaXXXine also addresses the “Satanic Panic” movement that emerged in the 1980s, a belief by members of the far Christian right that Hollywood was corrupting the minds of young people through graphic content that was seen in horror films. Considering how shocking and brutal De Palma’s films tended to be, his name was often floated when discussing this controversy. MaXXXine offers a fresh take on this era by showing that the films themselves were never to blame. Maxine is only targeted by her malicious televangelist father Ernest (Simon Prast) because he can’t handle his daughter’s independence. Despite initially being labeled as the reason for Hollywood’s moral failings, Maxine ends up defying the odds and helping catch the killer. This is perhaps a tribute to the work that De Palma himself did, despite initially being dismissed by critics as nothing but an innovator of exploitation, De Palma was eventually accepted into the canon of cinema’s greatest modern filmmakers.

'MaXXXine' Modernizes De Palma’s Themes of Exploitation

While the horror genre has always had a complex relationship with women, De Palma’s work was groundbreaking because he was capable of showing female characters who were able to defend themselves. There’s perhaps no better example than his gripping adaptation of Stephen King’s horror novel Carrie, in which the titular character (Sissy Spacek) creates a massacre at her school dance after being bullied and humiliated. A similar moment happens early on in MaXXXine, where Goth’s character brutalizes a man dressed as Buster Keaton who attempts to assault her.

Although he’s made some of the greatest thrillers and horror films of all time, De Palma’s work has occasionally come under fire for perpetrating themes about the “final girl” having to be a virgin in order to survive. In a refreshing update, MaXXXine features a sexually adventurous protagonist who is not ashamed of her body. MaXXXine clearly has a lot of admiration for De Palma, but that doesn’t mean he's not willing to modernize his more problematic qualities.

MaXXXine is in theaters now.