Divine Intervention in Ti West’s ‘MaXXXine’
By Sydney Bollinger
Previous ⬅ The Art of Repression in Ti West’s ‘Pearl’
Warning: The following contains spoilers for the film MaXXXine
Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) has suffered. After escaping her conservative childhood and televangelist father, she narrowly escaped death, only surviving by murdering her assailant, an older woman named Pearl (also played by Mia Goth). Maxine’s past swirls around her, and the tendrils director Ti West started growing in X (2022) and Pearl (2022) snake around MaXXXine (2024), forcing the titular character and the audience to contend with what it means to atone, what it means to forgive, and how we do this in a world with an outsized concern for purity and holiness.
The thread of Maxine’s story in MaXXXine starts in X with the recurrent voice of a televangelist revealed at the end of the first film to be Maxine’s father. Since she left home, he has been searching for her, calling on his congregation and God not only to save her soul but the souls of others like her: those who are lost, the sheep who have wandered away from the shepherd.
Maxine’s father paints her as a victim of society’s only worsening loose morals, but Maxine is the heroine of her own story. She embodies the sexual liberation of the 1970s and the raw independence associated with the 1980s. This is an era of freedom, but also conservatism as Ronald Reagan’s presidency overshadows the majority of the decade.
The film opens with Maxine arriving at an audition for The Puritan II, the second horror film in a series directed by intense feminist Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki). Elizabeth sees horror as an avenue to discuss women’s issues and frequently mentions the importance of her work despite horror as a genre being seen as uneducated schlock. Maxine lands the role for her emotional, embodied performance and unparalleled confidence; she tells Elizabeth and the casting directors to hire her for the movie.
Here begins Maxine’s journey to achieve the stardom she’s always wanted. But the past has come back to haunt her. In the midst of the Night Stalker’s reign in Los Angeles, she also contends with the stress of transitioning from adult film and sex work to a “real” movie on the silver screen, the events of X, the deaths of those closest to her, and private investigator John Labat’s (Kevin Bacon) pursuit of her. This combines with the height of the Satanic Panic to place Maxine in the center of tension between the pursuit of her own happiness and reckoning with the past.
Ti West steeps his film trilogy in not just history, but emotional memory. X, Pearl, and MaXXXine are not simply period dramas, they’re also reflections of the present’s tension between morality and immorality. Maxine doesn’t care about this tension, she lives outside of it, having made the deliberate choice to live a life evangelical morality cannot guide.
The lines of Maxine’s life blur when she starts working on The Puritan II. She continues her sex work, both in pornography and at a peep show, where she shares the news of her big break with her coworkers. Two of her friends — Amber James (Chloe Farnworth) and Tabby Martin (Halsey) — invite her to a party in the Hollywood Hills. Maxine declines. For Maxine’s friends, the party at the house of a Hollywood executive is their opportunity for a big break, but having landed a movie role, Maxine no longer needs those connections. She’s in.
Having her “in” keeps Maxine on course. Despite threats from Labat and her friends turning up murdered and branded with Satanic symbols, she refuses to help. When John Labat threatens her, saying there will be repercussions if she doesn’t attend a party on Starlight Drive, she ignores them. Here, reflections and nightmares from the events of X find their way into Maxine’s head. Dependent on only herself, she made it this far. When LAPD detectives Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale) ask Maxine for help or insight into the murders of the people closest to her, she refuses. Williams attempts to make a woman-to-woman plea, saying that Maxine could save them, but Maxine responds, “Well maybe they should save themselves.”
As a woman who has saved herself (on multiple occasions), this is Maxine Minx’s mantra. She wants nothing to get in the way of her Hollywood dreams, but things do: the murders and John Labat.
After showing up late to set, Elizabeth sets Maxine straight: if she doesn’t take care of what’s causing her lack of focus, she’s off the film. This acts as Maxine’s turning point. Now that she might lose the thing she always wanted, she must make decisions that lead her to take care of “the problem.”
The problem here is that Maxine is fundamentally independent, necessitated by having left home to “pursue a life of sin.” She doesn’t want to be or need to be forgiven (by God or anybody), but her inability to see past her own ambition is what led to the murders originally. Here, the mirror begins to fracture. Through the film trilogy, we’ve followed Maxine’s journey and her desire for fame. Even Pearl speaks to the audience about Maxine by showing the “left turn.” What if Maxine Miller never became Maxine Minx?
In the pursuit of her dream, she decides to take care of business. First, by murdering John Labat, then by finally making her way to the address on Starlight Drive. Of course, the murders and the address are connected. Maxine knows this. The detectives know this. The audience knows this. But Maxine needed the stakes to be high enough to warrant getting involved. Maxine’s ambition, her want to be famous, is core to her identity and it supersedes all other wants, so when Maxine’s own televangelist father reveals himself to be the murderer, the pieces snap into place.
Despite their moral differences, Maxine and her father, Ernest (Simon Prast), share the same dream. They both want to be famous. Ernest, believing Hollywood to be a corrupting institution, wants to expose this fact through a snuff film. Ernest Miller believes in his production and that burning his daughter will eradicate the sin from her body. This scene, in particular, reminds the audience of the all-encompassing desire for fame. Nothing should — or can — eradicate the star of those who want it most.
And Maxine wants it most.
After a deus ex machina in the form of trusty detectives Williams and Torres, Maxine escapes and runs after her father, eventually catching up with him under the Hollywood sign. Here the pieces of Maxine converge: former fundamentalist daughter, murderer, star. She becomes three in one, reciting her father’s words back to him: “I will not accept a life I do not deserve.” It’s the sucker-punch-back-to-reality moment in a series of events that can only be described as over-the-top, but it only makes it more effective. Maxine is over-the-top. She’s ambition embodied, willing to stop at nothing to get what she wants. Even killing her own father and, in the process, the only link to purity and repression she has left. Maxine Minx saves herself; she is her own divine intervention.
The film ends with Maxine’s newfound fame — not just for The Puritan II. Her name is in lights, elevating the stature of film because of the stand-off with her own father. In the end, Maxine got what she always deserved: the chance to be a star. 🩸
About
Sydney Bollinger (she/her) is a queer writer based in Charleston, SC. She regularly writes for Charleston City Paper’s arts & entertainment section, covering local artists and events that trangress boundaries of creativity. Her creative work has been publishing in Northwest Review, GARLAND (Fifth Wheel Press), and Dunes Review. Follow her @sydboll and find her work at sydneybollinger.com.
Follow MANOR on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, and other sites via Linktree.
© 2022 Manor Entertainment LLC
