‘MaXXXine’ Gives Us the Last Final Girl We’ll Ever Need
As Americans, we’ve always been told to strive for the life we feel we deserve. Maxine Minx embodies that as the fiery lead of MaXXXine, the third installment in a possible four-part franchise by director Ti West. Horror sequels tend to fizzle out after the original shocks and scares grow predictable. West easily maneuvers past that by focusing on the dazzling center of his trilogy—a role reprised with devastating intensity by Mia Goth.
West weaves a dark fairy tale out of 1980s Hollywood, but Maxine is no damsel in distress. MaXXXine drops us into the heart of Los Angeles in 1985. It’s a time when Ronald Reagan preached on TV, the Night Stalker terrorized young women across the city, and moral outrage was at an all-time high. Maxine finds herself right in the eye of the cultural storm—with a sinister plot against her no less.
Collaborating with Goth (who is also credited as a producer and co-screenwriter), West brings horror tropes to the big screen in a new light. He manifested his own fantasies when he set out to make an exploitation film with X. The 2022 film is a 1970s-set slasher drawing major inspiration from exploitation films of the era, but West gives it modern stakes by grounding X and its follow-up, Pearl, with its female leads, Maxine and Pearl (both played by Goth). Pearl, though the antagonist of X, is a sympathetic figure. She represents the consequences of a life of unfulfilled desires. The two women share the dream of stardom, something that Hollywood promises young girls. But Maxine isn’t just a dreamer—she puts on her cowboy boots to make it happen.
Goth struts onto the scene in MaXXXine with confidence oozing from her every step, fully sinking into her most iconic role. The film kicks off with a breathtaking audition for what could be her first big break: a lead role in horror sequel The Puritan II. The director is a wise yet intimidating mentor played by Elizabeth Debicki. She asks Maxine, “Are you ruthless?” It’s a question Maxine doesn’t hesitate to answer. Obviously, she kills her audition, brandishing a don’t-give-a fuck attitude about her career as a porn actress. In harsh contrast to her doppelgänger, Pearl, she saunters past all the women awaiting their auditions on the way out, yelling, “They might as well go home, because I just fucking nailed that!” With the help of her friend Leon (Moses Sumney) and her equally savage agent, Teddy (Giancarlo Esposito), she snatches the lead role...as a killer begins to kill people close to her.
But we shouldn’t be afraid for Maxine. We should fear for anybody who dares to go against her. Nowadays it feels like every horror film is about trauma (see: Hereditary, Smile, and every Halloween sequel, according to Jamie Lee Curtis). The private detective who blackmails Maxine, John Labat (played by Kevin Bacon with an impressive Louisiana drawl), taunts her. He asks her if she doesn’t feel immense guilt for surviving the massacre that killed all her friends in X. But he doesn’t know Maxine. She won’t let anything get in the way of becoming a star—not even mass homicide.
That’s why Maxine Minx is the final girl to end all final girls. Of course, the term “final girl” has been around since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Sally Hardesty went up against Leatherface and his chainsaw and survived. The final girl is always a young woman— sexually desirable yet modest, well mannered, and a perfect angel—unlike the other wild, degenerate youths among her. And she always outsmarts or outruns the villain in the end. She’s a trope touted by some critics as feminist—and others as degrading. West doesn’t flout the formula to poke fun at the genre. The director and Goth take Maxine seriously. She doesn’t suffer senseless violence to fill up the gore quota. She does it to get what she wants.
Exploitation may be the name of the genre, but Maxine is never exploited. She gives her suffering meaning by pursuing her dreams. Intentionally or not, West provides the perfect allegory for the pursuit of the American dream through Maxine’s journey. She starts off as a small-town girl brought up on Christian values—who then moves to the big city and uses her sexuality to secure her place above the poverty line.
Not to mention she’s relentless in her ambition for fame. Maxine pulls herself up by the bootstraps—just as most Republican politicians at the time advised Americans to do—and she is even willing to kill to get the life she feels she deserves. Although we don’t condone the actions taken in the film (lest the parental-advisory activists find us!), you can’t help but be inspired by Maxine’s tenacity. We could all use some of her ruthlessness in our lives, even if it’s just in small ways. Whether Maxine is meant to be a role model or not, West certainly knew he was creating an icon. I know I’ll be repeating her mantra all summer: I will not accept a life I do not deserve.
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