Ti West’s X trilogy, comprising X (2022), Pearl (2022), and MaXXXine (2024), is one of the most ambitious horror undertakings of the decade. Across three wildly different films, West and his creative partner and star Mia Goth dissect the intersecting ideas of ambition, aging, fame, and exploitation. On the surface, these are stylish genre pieces, slashers, psychodramas, and neo-noirs, but beneath that surface lies an incisive exploration of what it means to want to be seen and what one must sacrifice to achieve it.
The films are connected through characters, but even more so through theme. In X, a group of young filmmakers in 1979 travels to rural Texas to shoot an adult film on an old couple’s property. What begins as a playful throwback to 1970s grindhouse quickly becomes a meditation on the fear of aging, the loss of youth, and the envy of vitality. The elderly hosts, Pearl and Howard, are both repulsed and fascinated by the youthful sexuality invading their farm. The killings that follow are both horrific and strangely poignant, as if Pearl’s violence is born from the terror of being forgotten by a world obsessed with youth and desire.
Ti West leans heavily into the aesthetic of the era, muted colors, grainy textures, slow pacing, and practical gore effects, to capture not just a setting, but an entire cinematic tradition. X doesn’t parody 70s horror; it recreates it with affection and precision. What makes the film stand out, though, is its restraint. West spends time letting us understand his characters before chaos strikes. They are not just disposable archetypes, but dreamers chasing success in a society that only rewards visibility. Mia Goth’s dual performance as Maxine, the aspiring star, and Pearl, the lonely killer beneath latex makeup, turns what could have been a simple slasher into something mythic, the same person at two ends of life’s cruel timeline.
If X is about desire and fear in youth, Pearl is about the birth of that hunger itself. Set in 1918, decades before X, this prequel tells the story of Pearl as a young woman trapped on her parents’ isolated farm, dreaming of escape and stardom while the world outside is ravaged by war and influenza. The film replaces X’s dirty realism with saturated color and sweeping melodrama. The visuals evoke early Technicolor musicals, with wide, bright skies and crisp compositions that make the violence all the more shocking when it comes.
What West and Goth accomplish in Pearl is remarkable. It’s a slasher film filtered through the language of classic Hollywood, a twisted fairytale about a girl who wants so badly to be loved that she’ll destroy anything standing in her way. Goth’s performance is astonishing, oscillating between fragility and madness. Her long, unbroken monologue near the film’s end, in which she confesses her guilt and longing, is one of the finest horror performances in years. Pearl turns the simple desire to “be someone” into a cosmic horror. In her mind, fame is salvation; invisibility is death.
West directs with confidence, merging surreal visuals with old-fashioned storytelling. Unlike the first film, Pearl spends little time on kills or suspense. Instead, it focuses on the slow suffocation of a woman whose dreams are bigger than her world allows. The film’s slow pacing and odd tonal shifts can test patience, but they mirror Pearl’s internal rhythm, her emotional repression building until it explodes in Technicolor fury. For many, Pearl is the crown jewel of the trilogy, a horror movie that feels both classical and modern, tragic and grotesque.
MaXXXine, the final chapter, moves the story forward to 1985 Los Angeles, following Maxine, the lone survivor of X, as she claws her way toward Hollywood stardom. The setting swaps the rural decay of the first film for neon lights, VHS sleaze, and cocaine-dusted nightclubs. On paper, it’s a perfect endpoint: the dream that Pearl once craved has finally been reached, or at least glimpsed. Yet West doesn’t offer the triumph one might expect. Instead, the film reveals that the system Pearl once worshiped is just as cruel and exploitative as the world that rejected her.
Maxine is no longer the naïve dreamer we met in X. She’s sharper, colder, more self-aware. Her survival has hardened her, but it has also made her ruthless. In many ways, she becomes the mirror image of Pearl, both women devoured by the same hunger for recognition. The Hollywood of MaXXXine is a haunted labyrinth, full of broken promises, predators, and ghosts of past sins. West fills the film with visual nods to 1980s thrillers and giallo horror, flashes of colored light, smoky interiors, synth scores, and exaggerated violence. It’s less about realism than about the spectacle of fame itself.
While MaXXXine is stylish and often thrilling to look at, it lacks some of the emotional depth of its predecessors. The narrative is busier, juggling subplots and side characters that don’t always connect. Maxine’s character, once vulnerable and complex, becomes almost mythic, more symbol than person. Still, the film ties the trilogy together by completing the circle: Pearl’s longing to be seen becomes Maxine’s determination never to disappear. The horror isn’t just in the killings, but in the realization that survival and fame may require the same moral sacrifices.
Taken as a whole, the X trilogy is a fascinating evolution of both Ti West and Mia Goth. Each film feels like a self-contained experiment in style, yet all three share a central question: What does it mean to be seen, and what does it cost? X examines that question through the lens of sexual liberation and repression. Pearl turns it into a fever dream of yearning and loneliness. MaXXXine transforms it into a cynical, neon-lit commentary on Hollywood’s machinery of fame. Watching the trilogy in order feels like moving through the stages of obsession: desire, delusion, and damnation.
The trilogy’s greatest strength lies in its willingness to change. Most horror franchises repeat their formula until it collapses under its own weight. West does the opposite, he reinvents his world with each entry. The first is gritty and grounded, the second lush and tragic, the third flashy and surreal. Yet despite the differences, the emotional throughline is clear. These are stories about people, mostly women, whose worth is measured by how the world looks at them. Whether on a farm, a stage, or a film set, the gaze remains relentless and consuming.
Mia Goth deserves particular credit for binding the trilogy together. Her performances across the films are magnetic, fearless, and layered with contradictions. As Pearl, she’s both innocent and monstrous; as Maxine, she’s both victim and opportunist. Few modern actors have been given a platform this wide to explore the extremes of a single thematic obsession. She embodies West’s idea that horror and performance are intertwined, that fame itself is a kind of possession.
Not everything in the trilogy works. The pacing of Pearl may frustrate those expecting constant thrills, and MaXXXine sometimes trades coherence for spectacle. And some have argued that West’s themes are more gestured toward than fully developed. To me, that is a strength, not a weakness. Yet even when the films falter, they do so with vision. They are horror films made with a filmmaker’s love for cinema’s history and a deep curiosity about its psychology. In an industry often dominated by safe sequels and reboots, the X trilogy feels personal, strange, and alive.
If one were to rank them, Pearl stands out as the emotional and artistic peak, a blend of tragedy and horror that feels timeless. X follows closely behind, a thrilling and thoughtful homage to the slasher genre. MaXXXine, while less cohesive, provides the necessary conclusion, allowing the trilogy’s themes to echo forward into the modern world of celebrity and surveillance. Together, they tell a single story about the horror of being alive in a culture that prizes youth, beauty, and visibility above all else.
Ti West’s trilogy is less about blood and gore than about the cost of dreaming. Each character, in their own way, chases an illusion, fame, youth, love, and finds only emptiness staring back. The result is a cinematic triptych that moves from the dirt of 1970s backroads to the glitz of 1980s Hollywood, tracing a century-long obsession with being noticed. It’s a meditation on art, desire, and mortality, delivered through the language of horror.
The X Trilogy Blu-ray box set from A24 is a collector’s dream, an art object as much as a home release. Housed in a clear plastic sleeve with blood-red font that slides over a rigid slipcase, the packaging immediately evokes the trilogy’s mix of beauty and menace. Inside, a custom photo-collage digibook holds the three discs, each adorned with new key art that ties the films together visually while preserving their distinct aesthetic identities. The set’s 64-page booklet is a major highlight, featuring a new essay by film historian Jon Dieringer that contextualizes Ti West’s trilogy within the broader history of American horror and exploitation cinema. Complementing the essay are previously unreleased materials, concept art, costume sketches, and behind-the-scenes photography that offer a rare look into the craftsmanship behind the films’ period detail and visual design. The inclusion of original poster and VHS artwork created as set dressing further blurs the line between fiction and artifact, turning this release into a meta time capsule of horror history.
Beyond its elegant presentation, the box set is packed with substance. Over ninety minutes of new making-of featurettes trace the evolution of the trilogy from a 1970s grindhouse homage to a full-blown cinematic mythos. Each film includes a newly recorded commentary, X and Pearl feature insights from cinematographer Eliot Rockett and production designer Tom Hammock, who discuss the visual continuity between the two eras. At the same time, MaXXXine brings in production designer Jason Kisvarday and set decorator Kelsi Ephraim to unpack the 1980s neon nightmare. The documentaries range from practical showcases, like the Pearl makeup time-lapse, to thematic explorations such as Hollywood is a Killer, which dives into the trilogy’s commentary on fame and exploitation. Add in Q&As with Ti West, interviews with composer Tyler Bates, and a suite of trailers, and this set becomes the definitive archival edition, an essential deep dive into one of the most daring horror trilogies of the 21st century.
Whether or not all three films fully succeed will depend on the viewer, but what’s undeniable is that Ti West’s X trilogy stands as one of the boldest and most original experiments in contemporary horror cinema. It bridges exploitation and empathy, shock and sorrow, crafting a portrait of human fear that cuts deeper than mere violence. These films remind us that horror’s power lies not in sudden twists or gore, but in its ability to confront the quiet terrors we all share, the relentless march of time, the fading of youth, and the aching desire to be seen and remembered in a world that so easily moves on.
The X Trilogy is available to own today!
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