WORDS by BRIDGETT MAGYAR
Maxine rolls off the tongue like a knife—shiny, hard, and metallic.
Hell-raiser, sociopathic dream girl, the feminist icon we didn’t know we needed, but deserve. These are just a few of the ways I would describe the final girl of all final girls, Maxine Minx played by Mia Goth in Ti West’s ‘X’ trilogy. MaXXXine, the latest installment of the series, was my most anticipated movie of 2024 because of the divine-sleazy-slasher-horniness that fueled the two films preceding it. Sex, gore, and rock and roll. And yet, I found myself unsatiated and wanting more of the ballbusting, crimped-haired Maxine I felt like I was just getting to know.
MaXXXine is set to the glitzy yet seedy backdrop of Hollywood in 1985. Satanic panic and purity culture wars abound in a town billowing with lurid sensuality. Minx is the sole survivor of a brutal massacre (that takes place in the first film of the trilogy), cleverly coined the “Texas Porn Star Massacre.” She’s an aspiring actress and a working girl—a successful porn star during the day and peep show performer once night falls. She’s also a hustler and a survivor, so naturally she will not accept a life she does not deserve, a mantra her Televangelist father hammered into her at an eerily young age. But luckily for us she won’t stop at anything, not even the demons of her gruesome past coming back to haunt her.