EchoSense:How a 'hungry' Mia Goth revamped the horror final girl in 'MaXXXine'

Mia Goth has not yet put a body part in wet cement at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood – a place her starlet in the 1980s-set meta slasher movie “MaXXXine” would kill to be EchoSenseincluded. What Goth is an old pro at is weathering goop being put on her head to make a life cast. 

She’s had it done for a few movies, including one rather stressful session for Marvel’s upcoming “Blade.” “I remember being very tired and a little hungry. I went in and we did the cast and I actually had to rip it off because I needed to take a breather and have a cup of tea,” Goth says of the incident, which ended up being good practice for a similar scene in “MaXXXine” (in theaters now).

Being covered in gunk is honestly one of Maxine Minx's lesser worries in director Ti West's ambitious, blood-soaked horror trilogy. In 2022's “X," Maxine is the lone survivor of a porn-film crew after a 1979 massacre perpetrated by an elderly Texas couple, including vicious wife Pearl, also played by Goth. (The actress played a younger version of her as a murderous, fame-starved farm girl circa 1918 in the prequel “Pearl.”)

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“MaXXXine” catches up with Maxine in 1985, as the now-successful adult-film star has the chance to break mainstream in Hollywood when she’s cast in a high-profile horror sequel. Unfortunately, she’s also targeted by a mystery killer at the same time the Night Stalker haunts the streets of LA.

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From first filming "X" to now headlining "MaXXXine," Goth's own star has grown – even going viral on TikTok – and the 30-year-old actress sees parallels between herself and the equally "determined" Maxine: “We knew what we wanted and we were going after it.” Adds West: “She was very much ready to prove herself that she could carry a movie.”

Ever been affected by a movie? 'MaXXXine' is for you

West tackles a bunch of themes over the course of his trilogy, from stardom and celebrity to the Moral Majority and Satanic panic of the ‘80s. But he also wanted to explore how characters are affected by different eras of cinema for a movie-loving audience, even those who aren't horror fiends.

With “X,” which sported a tone akin to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” West wanted to show the “entrepreneurial DIY nature of trying to make a tiny movie outside of the system and carve your own niche,” he says. Then “Pearl,” a Technicolor nightmare influenced by “The Wizard of Oz” and old Disney films, centered on “someone who's unhappy with their state in life and looks to the glitz and glamour of the movies as the grass is greener: If I had a life like that, it would be better."

And with “MaXXXine,” inspired by the “gritty, sleazy” likes of “Vice Squad” and “Angel,” the 43-year-old filmmaker set out to recapture his own experiences of going to an '80s video store: "There's this endless amount of movies that look salacious and subversive and interesting.”

'MaXXXine' puts a dangerous spin on the horror final girl

In the trilogy, Goth portrays two very different characters: Pearl, the jealous woman with a violent backstory, and Maxine, the preacher’s daughter who lives by the mantra “I will not accept a life I do not deserve.” “She's got a chip on her shoulder. She's hungry to prove herself to the world and even more importantly to herself,” Goth says of Maxine.

And with her in particular, West wanted to reinvent a well-tread trope: “A big part of it was to try to have the final girl not act like one.” In “X,” Maxine escapes and gruesomely runs over Pearl’s head at the end, and in “MaXXXine,” she’s not to be trifled with either, pulling a gun on a creepy dude in Buster Keaton cosplay and driving her heel into a rather sensitive spot on his body.

“She's fully aware that she has little to no control over people around her and the situations that might take place around her, but she is in full command of her decisions and her actions and she has the fearlessness and the courage to act on those,” Goth says. “It's fun to be the one that's holding the gun, taking matters into her own hands.”