Sixteen Continued Screams For Halloween: Day 14 (MaXXXine)

It's funny how we got here, of all places. It started two years ago with the Scream franchise, of all things. Namely the heads behind it shitcanning Melissa Barrera from it and scrapping all of their plans because she dared to (checks notes) defend Palestine. Lovely. I vowed never to engage with the Scream franchise again due to this, which is just as fucking well because from the sounds of it? Scream 7 is the kind of movie the killers from Scream 5 enacted their killing spree in the hopes that Hollywood would make. A trope-laden legacy sequel baiting disaster in slasher form. We're not talking about that, thank Christ. Part of my support for Melissa Barerra was watching a different spooky movie with her in it. Turns out her costar in those Scream movies, Jenna Ortega, also quit them in solidarity, and so I watched a movie with her in it as well. That ended up being Ti West's X. Ignoring the fact that Ortega's girlie was killed in it, making it kind of a missed tribute (I'm sorry, I wasn't watching an entire season of the Wednesday Addams show), it was a banger film. The followup/prequel film, Pearl, also a banger film which I covered last year. Even better. Now here we are at the end of the road of this trilogy. I am here to tell you that MaXXXine is the best of these yet. Here's why.

This trilogy has always been well-marinated in themes of puritanical values vs. hedonism, period pieces all about the price of fame and what the aspiring stars pay in order to get it, brutal and violent murders, and Mia Goth being a fucking movie star. MaXXXine is the perfect fever-pitched climax to all of this: whereas X was late 70's rural horror, a la Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Pearl was a 1920s Norman Rockwell painting dripping with blood and malice, MaXXXine is set in Hollywood 1985. The opening montage gives you everything you need to know to understand the aesthetic: CRTs, synth tunes, cocaine, and the Satanic Panic. Underpinning all of this is Mia Goth as Maxine, and holy fucking shit just give this woman all of the awards. That smile she held in Pearl still lives rent free in my head, and the looks she gives in this movie are just as haunting. Maxine is equally haunted by the spectres of her past: both in barely surviving the murderous machinations of the elderly Pearl in X as well as by the mysterious killer who's murdering folks close to her. Oh, and Kevin Bacon as a sleazy PI who gives the film some great relentless chase scenes. 

The baddie (who I am proud to say I called within the first bit of the picture, I only brag because this never happens with me) ends up being Pearl's religious nutjob of a father who's on this moral crusade to kill promiscuous girls in order to save their souls or something. Again, it's the Satanic Panic gone wild, madmen Christians deciding that the Ten Commandments don't apply to them any more if it's a righteous crusade against evil or something. Murder is still murder, shithead. You're going to jail. Through all three films we get Mia Goth's sheer anguish and attempts to become a star: we see the porn star Maxine barely survive in X, we see how the girl who tried to kill her tragically failed to reach stardom in Pearl, and we see her finally knuckle up and make it, despite all the fuckass people trying to kill her, in MaXXXine. There's a sense of triumph (helped by the fact that the climax goes fucking hard) in Maxine reaching her goal of mainstream success here. Through three films and two characters we've seen Mia Goth's struggle, and at last it's done. Just like the trilogy here is done.

In short, it's an absolute goddamn masterpiece, oozing 80's vibes along with the seedy underbelly of Hollywood and the disgusting ultraviolence of a horror picture. Also Mia Goth is so fucking good in it. It might be one of the better horror trilogies. I don't know, I haven't counted them all. But, goddamn, they just got better and better until this fever pitch of a baller-ass banger-ass motion picture. Here's to you, Mia Goth. Here's to you. Only two left, gang. Let's head into the endgame.