Q: Do I need to see Pearl and X to understand MaXXXine?
A: No. You should see them all, but if you do it out of order you’ll be OK.

(Note: If you’re as puritanical as me about going into movies with zero background, a few light spoilers follow).

Your friend just scored VIP tickets to an intimate screening of MaXXXine in Mia Goth’s living room. The bad news is you haven’t seen the other films and your limo arrives in 10 minutes. Will you be OK? The answer is yes.

MaXXXine, the prequel to X, works on its own as a plot-driven slasher/mystery

MaXXXine is essentially a slasher/mystery. Because of this it relies on the present tense to advance the story, and uses genre devices to keep you rooted in a state of suspense.

MaXXXine alludes to past events just enough to add tension and drama to the visceral events happening right now. Director Ti West uses an ’80s aesthetic and subtle references to stylized Italian “giallo” slashers to keep you focused on the sensual experience unfolding in front of you, and not so concerned with what came before.

Maxine Minx has a dark past, but you don’t need to know what it is

Maxine Minx is a successful adult film actor who, at the time of MaXXXine, wants to break into mainstream films. In MaXXXine, Ti West never fully reveals what happened to Maxine in X… and that’s OK. He shows you flashbacks, visions, and veiled threats, all of which make it clear that:

(Light spoiler alert).

1) Like many movie characters, Maxine has a dark past. In MaXXXine this serves as a standard plot device to move the story along. It also adds some vulnerability to her character which, if you’ve seen X, might be new and refreshing.

2) Maxine did something in 1979 that could get her in trouble now, in 1985. If you’re choosing to watch MaXXXine you know X is a horror movie. We all know what kinds of things happen in horror movies. Trivia: Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out in 1979 and is referenced in MaXXXine. Do with that what you will.

Note: On “dark pasts,” I’m not referring to Maxine’s career in adult films. One of the cool things about the X Trilogy is it’s pretty sexually liberated, as they said in the ’70s. I don’t want to assume, but the fact that Mia Goth and Ti West collaborate a lot (e.g., co-writing Pearl) may offset some of the male gaze you find in horror films that are written and directed by men.

MaXXXine has one “remedial reveal”

There is one plot point in MaXXXine that will not be as impactful if you didn’t see X, but you’ll still be able to keep up. It’s a “remedial reveal,” a term I just coined. This is where something makes immediate sense if you’ve seen the previous films or episodes, and the filmmaker has packaged up enough explanation so that it will still make sense if you haven’t.

Release and timeline order of the X trilogy films

Release order

X (March 2022)
Pearl (September 2022)
MaXXXine (July 2024)

Timeline order

Pearl (1918)
X (1979)
MaXXXine (1985)

So what’s the plot of MaXXXine?

Maxine, a successful adult film actor living in LA, wants to break into feature films. Her first opportunity is a horror film called The Puritan II. Her mentor/mentee relationship with the difficult, unforgiving, but deeply principled director (Elizabeth Debicki) is a major highlight of the film. Meanwhile a black-gloved slasher is killing women throughout the city, including some of her friends.

As the story progressess Maxine gets harrassed by two cops, and by the aforementioned sleazy detective, John Labat. Played perfectly by Kevin Bacon, Labat tries to blackmail Maxine into meeting with his anonymous client by threatening to reveal damaging information about her past.

What’s the plot of X?

In X, an adult film producer rents a cabin on a Texas farm to shoot his latest film, of which Maxine is the star. The farm owners, an elderly couple named Harold and Pearl, don’t realize the crew is shooting a porno. They figure it out. It doesn’t go well.

Pearl: a standalone masterpiece of modern American cinema

(You can skim through this bit if you want. Pearl is my current favorite film, and this wouldn’t be the first time I tried to say a few words about it and simply couldn’t).

Set 61 years earlier than X, Pearl offers a deep backstory on the character we see as an elderly woman in that film. You can watch Pearl before, after, or in between the other films.

Pearl works on its own as a textured drama with a strong sense of time and place to explore sophisticated social and psychological issues, while also being a stellar slasher film and piece of cinema.

Setting and brief synopsis

Pearl is set during WWI on the same Texas farm featured in X. Pearl, a young woman with an abusive mother, a father paralyzed as a result of Spanish Flu, a husband who’s gone off to war, and a set of wealthy in-laws who make her feel self-conscious, wants nothing more than to be famous, so much so it makes her a little crazy.

Textbook-level beauty and brilliance

Pearl is an exquisitely beautiful film shot in technicolor, like a ’30s-era retelling of an earlier time. If Hollywood Golden Age filmmakers had been cut loose from convention they might’ve made a movie like Pearl.

Pearl and the pandemic

Released during the tail end of COVID shutdowns, Pearl felt relevant and revealing when I first watched it. “This happened before” kept going through my mind, and the comparison between America’s response to a pandemic 100 years ago seemed superior to today’s, where the U.S. President actively discouraged an appropriate response.

In summary: no, you don’t have to watch Pearl or X before you watch MaXXXine. But should you?

MaXXXine does what every episodic TV series and many movie sequels do: It makes sure people who haven’t seen previous episodes know enough to enjoy the story. If you’ve decided to watch MaXXXine, and you have the time, here’s my suggestion:

Watch X before you watch MaXXXine.

🪓 Certain events will make immediate sense vs. even a few seconds’ processing time, giving them a more visceral impact.

🪓 It will feel more suspensful. You’ll understand the stakes better. John Labat will be more creepy and threatening and you’ll get the full Kevin Bacon experience.

🪓 You’ll get a better feel for Maxine. You’ll enjoy seeing the fresh vulnerability Ti West and Mia Goth bring to her character. It will affirm who she is as a whole person when you see what’s changed, and what’s remained the same.

🪓 At least one of the events will have a way better payoff. West really took something obscure from the first film and blew it out in the third.

🪓 MaXXXine really ties the films together. (Lebowski pun intentional. Although MaXXXine is more of a Blood Simple kind of film). Themes reach their natural conclusion in a wistful and uplifting way, with a bit of irony.

You can watch Pearl anytime, but…

I’ve thought about this for a while, and I think I’d suggest watching the films in release order. This has nothing to do with plot, but with the way the feel, style, and themes of the films—loneliness, family, vanity, self-reliance, sexuality, and stardom—play out across them.

Ti West shot X and Pearl back to back on the same set. I think it would be interesting to see how the look changes from a sparse, dark, dirty ’70s slasher movie, to a high wattage technicolor marvel, and finally to Los Angeles in the 1980s, which combines filth and glitter in its own way.

– ECH 2024