“Maxxxine” (2024), the final installment of Ti West’s X trilogy, ushers in the close of the story of Maxine Minx. A homage to slasher films of different eras, if “X“ had been a recreation of the grimy slashers of the 1970s a la “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” its secret prequel “Pearl” is a skewering of old-school Americana hearkening back to Disney films. And now “Maxxxine” is homaging the slashers of the 80s, including the gialli directed by Dario Argento and Mario Bava, from the garb of the killer after Maxxine to the overall garish primary color-heavy aesthetics.
Maxxxine (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Who is Maxine?
In the first installment of Ti West’s trilogy, Maxine Minx is an aspiring adult film actress who had a horrible night in 1979 when her crew had been gruesomely murdered by elderly couple Pearl and Howard, whose barn they had rented. While Howard would die of a heart attack that eventful night, Maxine would be responsible for killing Pearl by driving a truck over the injured Pearl’s head and crushing it. The camera used by the crew to shoot the film, or at least the snuff parts, would be recovered. It had also been revealed in the previous film that Maxine is the daughter of a highly popular televangelist who is launching a smear campaign against deviants and sex fiends.
Where is Maxine at the beginning of this film?
The movie opens with a quote from Bette Davis: “In this business, until you are known as a monster, you are not a star,” foreshadowing the themes this movie would ultimately try to explore even as it dips its toes into slasher territory—the toxicity of stardom. The movie begins in 1985 in Los Angeles, where Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) is seen auditioning for the lead of a horror movie sequel, Puritan II, even though all her credentials cite her as a successful adult movie actress. However, in her own words, she “nails it” and successfully bags the role.
This is the era of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, of the war on drugs reaching a fever pitch, of the Satanic Panic craze, and also of the Night Stalker murders. Amidst this era of LA sleaze and unrest, Maxine too makes her way through, working and grinding as a porn actress in the studio titled “The Landing Strip.” She shares her good vibes about the audition with her colleague and fellow actress Amber James (Chloe Farnworth), who invites her to a party up in Hollywood Hills, which she declines. She also learns—of having lost a part in a Lizzy Borden music video but having acquired the leading role in Puritan II—from her agent Teddy Knight that she excitedly informs her best friend in the city, Leon (Moses Sumney), who is also a video store employee.
As she and Leon both point out, there have been many actors who have kickstarted their careers in horror movies: Jamie Lee Curtis, John Travolta, Brooke Shields, and Demi Moore, and according to Maxine, this is going to make her a crossover star. She then goes to pick up her friend from her second job at a live peep show, where, unbeknownst to her, she is watched by a man dressed in an overcoat and wearing black gloves, similar to the killers in Giallo films directed by Dario Argento.
As Maxine and her friend Tabby Martin (Halsey) walk through the seedy streets of Hollywood, Maxine informs her of having a film fitting the next morning, thus declining Tabby’s offer of a party up in Hollywood Hills. As she helps her friend to a taxi, Maxine stubs her cigarette over Theda Bara’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
That reference, while somewhat empty, is also a tad bit clever because Theda Bara was a silent movie actress who rose to prominence in 1915’s A Fool There Was as a vampire and femme fatale. Her role as a femme fatale gained prominence, giving rise to the term “vamp” in the lexicon.
Who attacks Maxine in the alley?
As Maxine walks into a dark alley, she finds her road being blocked by a creep dressed as Buster Keaton, the silent movie star, and wielding a knife. However, instead of being cowered, Maxine puts her gun out and shouts at him to “Drop it, Buster” (nice double entendre). What follows is one gruesome sequence where Maxine orders the creep to strip in front of her and suck on the barrel of her gun before she crushes on his private parts and walks away. At the very least, this sequence does remind you of Maxine’s dark side, which resulted in the memorable climax of “X,” and that she is very capable as a final girl, if not entirely likable.
Unbeknownst to her, her friends Amber and Tabby would be kidnapped by the leather-clad figure and have their bodies branded with satanic symbols to blindside the police into believing that the killings had been orchestrated by The Night Stalker. Meanwhile, Maxine, who is spending the night with Leon (with whom she shares a platonic friendship), is disturbed from her slumber upon finding an envelope with the VHS tape containing the pornographic film that she and her friends had recorded six years prior, which should ideally be in police evidence.
Who is investigating Maxine?
Maxine would clearly be shaken upon obtaining the video, which she instructs Leon to locate its origin. At the fitting, where her face up to her neck would be covered in goop to design a dismembered head resembling her facial features, she would suffer a panic attack upon imagining being choked out by the figure following her. While being given the script for Puritan II, she notices a slip of paper stuck to the windshield of her car. Calling the number written on the paper from a payphone, she is connected to a private investigator named John Labat (Kevin Bacon), who instructs her to meet on the 34th floor of the Bonaventure Hotel.
While there, he reveals being informed about Maxine’s sordid past and of his employer, who has hired Labat to find her because of delivering divine retribution upon Maxine. To that end, Labat instructs her to attend a soiree that night on Starlight Drive, or she won’t work in that town again. He leaves her with an envelope that contains a newspaper clipping of the massacre over six years ago, with the headline “The Texas Porn Star Massacre.”.
Maxine drives up to her house, but she is stopped outside by LAPD Detectives Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale), who want to question her about Amber and Tabby’s disappearance. She refuses to talk with the police but does learn about their untimely deaths on the radio while driving to the Universal Backlot to visit the director of Puritan II, Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki).
Bender, while driving around with her golf cart, reveals her grand artistic plans for the sequel, a B-movie with A-ideas, exploring a protagonist who is “a killer but not a villain.” If that sounds like the blurb West himself follows for his trilogy, that might not have been intentional on West’s part, but Debicki takes inspiration from West’s appearance and mannerisms to craft her version of Bender. The final touch of West’s inspirations almost leaping off the page is when Bender drives up to the hill overlooking the Bates house from Psycho, a movie about “a serial killer disguised as an old woman.”
The fact that a sequel had been filmed a “few years ago” is also true, whereby the sequel would explore the psychological layout of Norman Bates’ character. But upon witnessing the house, Maxine imagines an old woman looking back at her, resembling Pearl (who had also been played by Mia Goth, so references feed off references galore). But Bender warns her that, considering she has stuck her neck out for Maxine to ensure she remains in the project, she expects a similar dedication on her end. This is not the “video nasty” (direct-to-VHS horror film) that the original Puritan had been, but a theatrical project. Success deserves obsession.
As a response to the remark stated upon her, Maxine notices being followed by Labat and stops at a traffic crossing, disembarks from her car, and punches Labat’s face, using the keys in her key fobs as sharp knuckle endings. She later reveals this detective’s doggedness to her sleazy agent, Knight, who promises to look into it, instructing her to focus on her career and leave everything to him.
How does Leon get killed?
Taking all the advice to focus on her career, Maxxine concentrates on reading the script and learning her lines. That night, while Leon would be closing his video store, he would be killed by a leather-clad serial killer who resembled the serial killer from the first Dario Argento-directed Giallo film, “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.” An emphasis on primary colors further hints at the inspirations. The killer would make mincemeat of Leon by slashing the back of his neck before repeatedly stabbing him in the back while Leon tried to crawl away. As Leon slowly dies, he brands his face with the satanic symbol and carves a scar through his left eye.
The next morning, Maxine is shocked to learn of the gruesome murder of her friend, and she is questioned further by the two detectives, who try to lean in on her to make her squeal because they are understandably suspicious of the deaths and the direct connection she has with the victims. However, Maxine stubbornly refuses to answer their questions.
What happens to John Labat?
At the studio, Maxine is understandably scolded by Bender for being late, which she doesn’t reveal the reason for. She also meets the original actress of the first Puritan movie, Molly Bennett (Lily Collins), who is also acting in Puritan II, but in a much smaller capacity. She advises Maxine not to get on Bender’s bad side before inviting her to the same party up on Hollywood Hills that Maxine had been getting invited to for the past couple of days.
Soon after, Labat, keeping good on his word in making Maxine pay, chases her across the Universal backlot before she ultimately manages to hide inside the Psycho house. Before he could get inside the house, he was found out by a security guard and escorted away. She later comes across Bender, who advises her to take the weekend and let loose but to come back on Monday and be fully involved in the work. If that means squashing the issue that is interfering with Maxine’s concentration, so be it.
Maxine takes that advice to heart because she goes out to a rave party that night. Upon realizing that Labat is following her, she manages to lure him outside, where he is knocked out by henchmen belonging to Teddy Knight. They manage to trap Labat in his car before having the car crushed by a junkyard compressor.
Who is the leather-clad killer?
Maxine finally decides to visit the address Labat gave her the first time they met. She finally connects the dots and realizes that this is the same address in Hollywood Hills where her friends and even Molly had invited her to come and party. She drives up to the mansions and takes the gondola to the top floor, not realizing that she is being followed by the two detectives.
Maxine walks up to the stairs and comes across a large door, behind which is a recording of young Maxine being schooled by her televangelist father (the same sequence that opens the film). As she enters the room, the killer (who had been waiting for her) reveals himself to be her father, Ernest Miller. Miller reveals that he is making a film with his followers, filming the murders in the style of a snuff film, to essentially reveal the deviancy pervading inside Hollywood that is destroying so many God-fearing families.
He believes that he will be able to uproot the Satanism inside Maxine and save her. Amidst this spiel, the briefcase of her father falls down the stairs, revealing the dismembered body of Molly stuffed inside, before Miller wraps a plastic bag around her head and chokes Maxine to unconsciousness.
Maxxxine (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Does Maxine kill her father?
When Maxine wakes up, she finds herself tied to a tree in the pool garden of the mansion, with the televangelist members surrounding her and some filming the event. Her father plans to document an exorcism that would reveal satanism pervading Hollywood and the cult that Hollywood is. He instructs Maxine to confess being possessed on live television; only then would she be provided divine intervention. If not, she would be marked by the same brand that had been applied to the rest of the victims.
The exorcism is interrupted by the detectives. A shootout occurs, with the majority of the white-robed members of the televangelists getting shot and killed. In the commotion, Maxine manages to untie herself, but before she can escape, she is dragged down the pool by one of the attackers, who tries to choke her underwater. However, she stabs him with the knife that she had used to cut her ropes off and plunges the knife through the man’s temple, killing him.
She doesn’t listen to the detectives’ advice. Arming herself with a shotgun, she follows her father, who had managed to escape amidst this commotion. At the Hollywood sign, she finds Torres shot fatally, bleeding out, and a couple of minutes later, Williams emerges from behind the sign, a cross stabbed across her eye, screaming that she had found him before sliding down the hill to her death. Behind the Hollywood sign, she finds her father mortally wounded, who, upon looking at her, calls her a monster and asks for forgiveness for failing her. Before she could make a move, she was interrupted by flashlights from an airborne police helicopter asking her to drop her weapon.
Imagining that flashlight to be a sort of portal of imagination, Maxine imagines herself to be a major star, becoming successful post-Puritan II and taking down a serial killer of her own, and in a press conference revealing that Elizabeth Bender had bought the rights to her story and would be making a biopic on her. She imagines herself telling an interviewer that it is hard work to be a star before coming back to reality and revealing that her father hadn’t failed her but had given her divine intervention. She then has him reveal the line he had hammered to her since the beginning: “I will not accept a life I do not deserve” before shooting him dead.
A month later, the shooting of Puritan II resumes, with a silent prayer acknowledging the loss of Molly Bennett before Bender reveals to Maxine that Bennett never had the X-factor that would allow her to continue beyond the first film. Maxine does. As Maxine looks through the camera at the prosthetic head above the bathtub, she whispers her wish—that this stardom should never end.
But as the camera slowly pans out of the Universal backlot and then moves farther and farther away toward Hollywood Hills, we see the Hollywood sign being replaced by “MAXXXINE.” A stylistic statement or further proof that the entire final segment had been a dream sequence leaves the film with a decided note of ambiguity, though the sequence showing her finally acting in Puritan II feels very much real.
Read More: MaXXXine: Digital Streaming Release Date Revealed for the final installment in Ti West’s X Trilogy starring Mia Goth
MaXXXine (2024) Trailer:
MaXXXine (2024) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
The Cast of MaXXXine (2024) Movie: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Bacon
MaXXXine (2024) Movie Release Date: 5th July 2024 | Genre: Horror/Mystery & Thriller | Runtime: 1h 41m
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