The third part of Goth and West’s terror-tinged triptych takes us into the Los Angeles of the 1980s
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Mia Goth as aspiring actor Maxine
It’s a much bigger, sprawling story and it exists in a very different aesthetic to the first two movies,’ says writer/director Ti West of MaXXXine, the feverishly anticipated follow up to X and Pearl. ‘It’s a 1980s aesthetic. It’s poppy, but still grounded in more of a grittier 80s than a shopping-mall 80s. You’re seeing the glamorous side of the movie business and the seedy side of Hollywood.’
In March 2022, A24 released X, a slasher movie set in 1979 Texas about a group of filmmakers who set out to make a porn movie only to suffer from premature expiration. Mia Goth played dual roles, as final girl Maxine and geriatric killer Pearl. Then, just months later, came Pearl, a prequel that was shot back-to-back with X and focused on Goth playing the eponymous slayer as a young woman on her Texas farm back in 1918. Hemmed in by threat of the Spanish Flu and by a ferociously overbearing mother, Pearl dreams of trading her domestic drudgery for fame and fortune, but instead journeys into madness and murder.
‘Not everyone makes it out alive’