“Y’all might as well go home, ’cause I just fucking nailed that!” 

An adult movie star sensation teetering on the brink of Hollywood stardom, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), hollers these words after delivering a bone-chilling audition for a new horror picture, The Puritan II. It’s 1985 Los Angeles, and Ti West’s third installment of his X trilogy, MaXXXine, pulsates with the neon glow, enchanting glamor, and gritty charm of 80s blockbusters. Maxine strides to her white Mercedes, license plate reading “MAXXXINE,” with big hair and a two-piece jean outfit. The opening scene alone screams, They’re going to fucking nail the finale. 

A love letter to pulp horror, MaXXXine is drenched in genre tropes, insider Hollywood jokes, and, well, plenty of blood. Countless critics will likely lambast the film as superficial or derivative, overflowing with references, such as the Bates Motel set or a perverted Buster Keaton, and I won’t be able to fully blame them. MaXXXine is puppeteered by the annals of horror history, and yes, this is often tiresome. Yet, it’s this unapologetic embrace of the genre that fuels not only MaXXXine but also its two predecessors. 

We’re catapulted six years from where we left Maxine in X, the gritty Texas Chainsaw Massacre–inspired slasher where the wannabe star and her “friends,” looking to shoot a porno at a secluded Texas farmhouse, unwittingly become targets to a murderous recluse, Pearl (also played by Goth). We learn more about this titular villain in the prequel, Pearl, which West filmed secretly alongside X. Jumping back to the 1910s, soaked in Technicolor (or something close), we witness Pearl’s chilling evolution from aspiring actress to sinister matriarch, steeped in desperation and madness, as she copes with the crushing pressure of unmet dreams. 

Unmet dreams. It is the desperation to avoid becoming a washed-up B-lister (or worse) that drives Maxine. The paranoia is the same that already pushed Pearl to insanity. And what’s most bloodcurdling is realizing that it’s the same innate impulse that allows Maxine to kill Pearl during X’s final slaughter-fest. Maxine refuses to settle for anything less, regardless of other people’s predispositions or preconceptions of her, firmly declaring, “I will not accept a life I do not deserve.” 

This mantra propels our (anti)heroine into stardom in MaXXXine. To the delight of her sleazy adult film agent, Teddy Knight Esq. (Giancarlo Esposito), she lands the part in The Puritan II (a take on The Exorcist), directed by an austere Elizabeth Bender. (Elizabeth Debicki plays this part with such imposing force that she, momentarily, draws our attention away from Goth’s performance.) It is Maxine’s big break—a fail-safe passage to the red carpet, away from porn, and away from the evangelical preacher, searching for his daughter, whom we learned to be her father at the end of X. 

However, Maxine’s path to stardom is shadowed by the faceless serial killer known as “The Night Stalker.” Girls close to Maxine start disappearing, including her close companion and porn star colleague, Tabby Martin, played by Halsey, but Maxine remains unfazed in her cold pursuit of fame. In fact, it appears the only thing that worries—or even scares her—is the memory of Pearl. This isn’t guilt; it’s a threat, one that is amplified when a VHS tape containing footage from the adult film she made during X appears on her doorstep, and when she’s confronted with the greasy Louisianan private eye, John Labat (Kevin Bacon), who knows someone who knows something about her real past. Instead of relying on the authorities—namely a pair of bumbling cops played by Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan—Maxine takes matters into her own hands, particularly when the faceless murderer kills her only true friend, Leon (Moses Sumney), who works in the video store below her apartment. 

It’s a dime-store murder mystery imbued with the heat and intensity of an 80s slasher. This bloody spectacle, where a shadowing figure donning Dario Argento–style leather gloves executes a gruesomely cinematic kill to synth, is a pure homage to giallo. The name of the subgenre, meaning “yellow” in Italian, comes from the yellow covers of pulp crime and thriller novels. So, here, West doubles down on his love for the pulp by showcasing his attention to giallo: the sultry neon lights, the simmering paranoia, the tormented yet resilient protagonist, and the stark, stylized violence hark back to the Italian horror tradition. 

One watch of Argento’s Deep Red (1975) will reveal just how much the giallo genre is a blueprint for West and Goth’s horror tribute, with plot twists, striking colors, and a nonstop series of suspense. Likewise, there are elements from sleazier iterations, like Mario Bava’s model murder movie Blood and Black Lace (1964). It’s saturated. It’s seductive. And more than anything, it’s an electrifying cinematic experience. 

MaXXXine deftly pulls in the essence of American 80s horror to bolster the giallo tropes. Nods to sophisticated, sexy thrillers like Body Double (1984) or Dressed to Kill (1980) celebrate the Americana craze over amateur investigations, where protagonists spiral deeper and deeper into a conspiracy as if pulled in by an irresistible undertow. It’s this visceral thrill that framed the cinematic zeitgeist of the decade, one that would be nothing without the concept of the “final girl.” There’s never a shadow of a doubt Maxine fucking Minx is going to be anything but that. This is possibly why, at some points, the film can feel slow. What are the stakes? But really, have we gotten so jaded by “breaking genre stereotypes” that we can’t appreciate a return to form? 

MaXXXine
R, 104 min. Wide release in theaters

No. And Mia Goth is the powerhouse that keeps MaXXXine moving. She embraces Maxine as capably as she embraced Pearl in the prequel. It’s her performance that elevates the drugstore horror story into a memorable salute to an often underappreciated genre. She understands the motivations of the characters, portraying them both with a fiercely relentless determination, a presence so intense it’s as though she would kill anyone to achieve her ends. In short, she would. The X trilogy takes the conventional mindset of the psychokiller and injects the murderous impulse into the final girl. Though we confront a barrage of references and inspirations, West and Goth still somehow deliver something new. 

MaXXXine and its predecessors make no pretense of being contemplative. They are, plain and simple, bloody thrillers and a celebration of the genre. That said, this pronounced reverence for pulp horror isn’t just about shock value; it blurs the lines between high and low art, ensuring the cheap terrors are not easily discarded. Like Maxine Minx when she yells, “I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” West and Goth won’t let pulp horror be relegated to the shadows.