Ti West's 'X' Trilogy Ends With Neither a Bang Nor a Whimper
'MaXXXine' is... okay?
Cinematic trilogies are notoriously difficult to end on a satisfying note1. So in that regard, MaXXXine, the concluding chapter of writer/director Ti West’s X trilogy, is a win: the movie is by no means a car wreck or slog.
It does, however, pale in comparison to its predecessors, ultimately struggling to balance its complex thematic messaging with the needs of a satisfying narrative.
PART I: A SPOILER-Y RECAP OF X AND PEARL
The basic conceit behind these three films is that each one is set in a different era, and each is done in the style of movies appropriate to that time (kinda sorta not really - more on that in a sec).
The first entry released, but the second chapter chronologically, is X. Set in Texas in 1979, it’s about a group of young(ish) folks surreptitiously making an adult film, The Farmer’s Daughter, in a rented farmhouse owned by an old couple, Howard and Pearl. This group includes Maxine, the runaway daughter of a televangelist who is doggedly determined to become famous, and thus willing to have sex on camera despite her religious upbringing (she also really likes cocaine).
X being a horror movie, Howard and Pearl have a secret of their own: they’re insane and homicidal. Pearl sees the crew filming a sex scene in the barn, and becomes saddened by the loss of her youth and beauty, and the unfulfilled lust that comes with that loss. That’s enough to send her and Howard on a killing spree, and by the end of the movie, Maxine is the sole aspiring pornographer left alive.
Howard and Pearl are ultimately undone by their age: Howard suffers a heart attack while moving a dead body, and Pearl tries to kill Maxine with a shotgun, only to break her hip as a result of the weapon’s recoil. As Maxine gets into a truck to make her escape, Pearl warns/taunts the younger woman that her beauty won’t last forever, and that she will someday end up just like Pearl. Maxine responds by running over Pearl’s head and fleeing before the cops arrive.
X is a highly entertaining homage to Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre which includes a truly astounding dual performance by Mia Goth as both Maxine and Pearl, who is so good you’d never even known you’d never know she played Pearl if it wasn’t in the credits (obviously the make-up department deserves a lot of credit, too).
Co-written by Goth, Pearl, the prequel to X, is set on the same farm in 1918. Its time period means it should be a silent film, but instead, it’s done in the vein of 1950s melodramas like Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. Here, we meet a much younger Pearl, who, like Maxine, is unreasonably preoccupied with being famous; she’s also already in the habit of murdering small animals and engaging in other troublesome behaviors (early in the narrative, Pearl has a very, uh, unusual encounter with a scarecrow). While Pearl desperately waits for Howard to return home from World War I, she has to contend with her abusively domineering mother, help care for her infirm father, and decide whether or not she wants to have an affair with a local movie projectionist (who is played by David Corenswet, giving a performance that ably demonstrates why the actor has since been cast as Superman). Pearl is a deep-dive character study that is considerably less plot-driven than X, and Goth’s performance in the film is truly next-level. There’s a scene near the end where Howard’s sister encourages Pearl to role-play with her, allowing her to practice everything she wants to tell Howard when he gets home; roughly six of the monologue’s eight minutes plays out entirely in a single close-up with no edits, and it’s breathtaking… as is Goth’s performance in the closing credits sequence.
PART II: A SPOILER-FREE DISCUSSION OF MAXXXINE
Which brings us to MaXXXine. Set in Hollywood in 1985, at the height of the Satanic panic, it’s primarily a giallo film2. Maxine is now a successful adult film performer, and she’s never been connected to the incident on that Texas farm years prior - but she’s still not the star she longs to be.
The chance to correct that arrives when she’s cast as the lead in a mainstream studio horror movie, The Puritan II. But her big break is threatened when a sleazy private detective, played by Kevin Bacon, shows up with evidence connecting her to what has been dubbed “The Texas Pornstar Massacre” (lest there was any doubt of the influence Hooper’s classic had on X). As if that wasn’t bad enough, her friends keep getting killed by someone who may or may not be the occult-obsessed serial killer known as the Night Stalker (who was a real guy, in case ya didn’t know), and as a consequence, there’s a pair of detectives (portrayed by Bobby Cannavle and Michelle Monaghan) sniffing around, thereby making it all the more likely that Maxine’s criminal past will be exposed.
MaXXXine has some excellent gore and some great laughs, the latter of which are provided primarily by Cannavale and Giancarlo Esposito, who plays Maxine’s agent. And Goth remains captivating, natch. Cineastes will no doubt also savor West’s myriad tributes to the films of directors like Dario Argento and Brian De Palma. As I said before, it is by no means a bad movie.
But it DOES suffer from a story that ultimately falls flat, both in terms of its construction and its larger intellectual concepts.
On the subject of narrative mechanics: there are no real surprises in MaXXXine (you will almost certainly figure out the mystery long before the characters in the movie do), and the dénouement forces Maxine into a largely passive role, despite this being very much her story. The conclusion also depends on a deep emotional connection between Maxine and another character that just isn’t there; she never says a single line of dialogue to this person until their very last encounter, and there’s no sense that she has any feelings for them, positive or negative.
On the subject of larger intellectual concepts: having now arrived at the end of this series, I still couldn’t really tell you what it’s about. The same themes that permeate X and Pearl - fame, sex, voyeurism, the fleetingness of youth, etc. - are on display here, but they never really tie together in any meaningful way. West also tries to place extra emphasis on Christianity (The Puritan II is plagued by Westboro Baptist Church-esque protestors), but, once again, it’s not really clear what he thinks he’s saying about that topic. The story ends in such a way that seems to suggest that religion and Hollywood are equally evil, which is interesting in theory… except the meat of the film doesn’t really back that up, because while Hollywood comes off as inarguably success-driven, it’s never shown to be directly responsible for horrible, violent death. There might be a way to demonstrate that these two storied, famously-corrupt institutions are uniformly ill-willed, but MaXXXine doesn’t find it.
Additionally, MaXXXine’s many riffs on other movies, fun though they may be, don’t actually add much. For example: Bacon’s character is costumed just like Jake Gittes from Chinatown, right down to the bandaged nose… but why? Other than that they’re both private detectives working in California, what do these characters have in common? What is West trying to say by invoking Chinatown… or De Palma’s Body Double, or Argento’s Deep Red, or any number of other pictures?
I guess what I’m saying is, my question for West would be my question for far too many filmmakers: What’s your POINT, bruh?
PART III: A SPOILER-FILLED DISCUSSION OF MAXXXINE
To be more specific about the subject of mystery: the movie opens with an old home movie and Maxine, as a little girl, talking about how she wants to be famous with her father. This is a lousy setup, because its sole purpose in the movie is to remind us that Maxine has an ultra-religious father. Add to that the fact that all the other major characters from X are dead, and that Maxine is specifically told the killer wants “retribution” against her, and you have to be kind of a schmuck not to realize that her estranged dad is the killer. I’m tempted to joke that West might as well be waving a side announcing the killer’s identity… except he also literally waves a sign announcing the killer’s identity: the most prominent of the Puritan protestors, seen multiple times and revealed very early on to be working with the killer, is holding a sign that says “Satan Stole My Daughter.” It’s pretty silly.
To be more specific about the subject of story mechanics: near the end of the movie, Maxine realizes that another actress, played by Lily Collins, is being lured to her death by the killer (who we’ve come to learn is a Night Stalker copycat, and not the actual Night Stalker). Although Maxine has previously declined to help catch the killer, she has a change of heart and decides to try to save Lily Collins.
She arrives at the location, learns that her father and his devout followers are behind the murders, and is knocked out. When she comes to, she’s tied up as her father prepares to perform an on-camera “exorcism,” with the vague implication that said “exorcism” might end with Maxine dead.
Fortunately for Maxine, Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan show up and save her. By the time Maxine has her final confrontation with her father, he has already been defeated. I don’t know why West opted to suddenly sideline this otherwise very active character during the climax of her own story, but it dampens any excitement this sequence might have otherwise provided. 99 times out of 100, it’s a mistake to rob your protagonist of agency, and MaXXXine is, alas, not that one special exception to the rule.
To be more specific about the subject of thematics: we never get enough psychological insight into Maxine’s relationship with her father to truly understand their schism. West’s bizarre decision for Maxine to silently listen to her father jabber after he’s revealed as the murderer, and not say a single goddamn word to him until just before his ultimate defeat, renders their relationship emotionless. Finding out your dad, who you haven’t spoken to in at least six years, has been leading a religious cult in ritualistic murders on your account should feel like a gut punch. It doesn’t amount to much here, though.
Then there’s the somewhat confusing manner in which MaXXXine’s handles mass media and religion.
Maxine’s father is already semi-famous when we meet him - remember, he’s a televangelist by trade - and his ultimate plan is to make a documentary about how Hollywood is Satanic. So he’s been killing people, and pinning it on the Night Stalker, to back up this thesis, and he plans for his documentary to conclude with Maxine being exorcised of her Hollywood demons.
So Maxine’s father and his acolytes are clearly not the good guys.
But that doesn’t mean that Maxine’s thirst for fame is ethically correct, either.
MaXXXine’s conclusion finds Maxine on her first day of work filming Puritan II. The crew has a moment of silence for poor Lily Collins, who did not survive her encounter with Maxine’s father, before they begin shooting. After the film’s director (played by Elizabeth Debicki) asks Maxine what she plans to do with her newfound mainstream success, Maxine declares, “I just never want it to end.” The final shot of the movie is of Maxine’s prosthetic severed head, sitting on a bed, preparing for its close-up.
I believe West is trying to say that Maxine’s values are ultimately just as skewed as those held by her dad. Her moment in the spotlight likely won’t last forever, and people have literally died for her to arrive at that moment in the first place.
But none of the deaths in X or this film are Maxine’s fault, save for those of Pearl and her father (both of whom, interestingly, she kills after they’re already down for the count and no longer present a threat). I reiterate: for all the talk of how Maxine is willing to “do anything” to achieve fame, MaXXXine fails to convincingly draw parallels between the ills of religion and the ills of Hollywood. It feels like West is ultimately making a false equivalency between the two institutions.
And so the X trilogy concludes as something of a jumble of interesting ideas that never quite connect. That’s too bad, because just to watch the first two films, you’d think West was creating something truly momentous. Ah, well. At least we’ll always have these luminous performances from Goth.
My theory about this is that it’s because three act structure is bullshit (as brilliantly and exhaustively illustrated here), so the third film always gets saddled with too much heavy lifting… but that’s a longer conversation for another essay.
Giallos would have already been around for 20 years by the mid-80s, although they were certainly still being made at that time.