One of the most stylish movies to hit the 2024 movie schedule, albeit the most grimy kind of style, Ti West’s Hollywood-glorifying sequel MaXXXine delivered a largely satisfactory ending to Maxine Minx’s tale. Which is obviously a good thing, since the filmmaker thinks they stuck the landing with this one, and likely won’t dive back into this universe anytime soon. But if Mia Goth’s Maxine does continue her journey, the story needs to address what I still think is a big plot hole even after rewatching.
It should go without saying, but we’ll be delving into SPOILERS BELOW, so be warned if you haven’t yet checked out MaXXXine streaming with a Max subscription, unless you’re just someone who loves knowing about plot holes before knowing about the plot itself.
Maxine Was Given A Copy Of A Police-Tagged Video Connecting Her To The Texas Murders
When Maxine first realizes that she’s being targeted, it’s only because her tormentor (later revealed to be her father) chose to antagonize her with a VHS tape containing footage from the pornographic movie filmed on RJ’s camera during the events of Ti West’s X. Donning the words “For Maxine” on the front label, the tape is shown to feature at least Maxine’s big sex scene, proving her to be the sole survivor of Pearl and Howard’s murderous rampage.
Most importantly, perhaps, is that the video begins with a screen notification that the footage was tagged as evidence by Texas authorities after the camera was confiscated at the scene of the deaths. I mean, it was fully assumed that cops would know of Maxine’s existence and grasp that she fled the scene, even if she wasn’t fully suspected of being the mastermind behind it all.
Leon Likely Had The Tape Nearby When He Was Murdered
Maxine is obviously freaked out knowing that someone out there has knowledge of both her past transgressions and her current whereabouts. So without any other investigation options to choose from, she tasks her bestie, video store clerk Leon (Moses Sumney), with learning anything he can about the VHS tape. Hours later, Leon gets slashed and stabbed to death by Maxine’s estranged father Ernest (Simon Prast), and viewers never get to hear that Leon didn’t ever learn shit about the video duplicate.
To be sure, I wouldn’t have expected any amount of VHS-based research to result in useful information for these characters, but the key detail here is that Leon almost definitely had the (presumably illegally copied) tape of police evidence on or around the video store’s front desk, since he was working until closing time that night. While it’s certainly possible that Ernest picked the tape up before getting into the vehicle with Kevin Bacon’s John Labat, he wasn’t grasping it in his blood-covered gloves at the time.
As such, I have to think the tape would have perked the eyelines of both Detectives Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale), even if none of the other officers on the scene had pegged its importance. And yet…
The Tape Isn’t Mentioned Again, Despite Being A Potential Bombshell For The Detectives
Considering Det. Williams pulls the garish move of lifting the blood-soaked sheet to reveal Leon’s sliced face to Maxine (and so many other onlookers who did not deserve to have their mornings ruined like that), I immediately presumed they’d found the “For Maxine” tape, clocked its ties to Texas police, and that it played into their attempt to provoke her emotional response. Even if the detectives weren’t yet able to make exact connections between Maxine and the prior murders, I can understand the intention there.
And I’m still following that assumption each time Monaghan’s character treats Maxine with sympathy, especially after she brings up being a “survivor.” And so when Williams and Torres show up and interrupt the exorcism ritual nightmare situation that Ernest Miller is filming, I’m fully thinking that Williams learned what happened in Texas, figured out that Maxine escaped a traumatic situation, and made the decision not to report her. A “strong women empowering strong women” kind of thing.
But none of that gets addressed by the time Williams’ hyper-freaky death scene happens, with Torres having already been left for dead by that point. We’re just sort of led to think that Williams intuitively understood Maxine was in a rough predicament, and chose to follow those instincts without actually knowing anything about her past. I get that Williams wouldn’t readily blurt all that out to Maxine, but the movie could have revealed that in a different way.
Maxine ends the film as a burgeoning star who wishes her fame will never cease, which already seems like a stretch considering her rise in popularity just makes it all the more likely that someone will connect her to the Texas murders. That eventuality wouldn’t even require the investigators to have found the “For Maxine” tape in the video shop.
However, it still stands to reason that whoever else worked in that video store, or was hired as Leon’s replacement, would have found the VHS and watched it just for cataloging purposes, only to realize they’d found something completely unexpected. So maybe the idea actually IS that Maxine’s stardom will always run counter to the threat that anyone knowledgeable about the unfinished porn can identify her and get her in a world of bad publicity.
Yet the film doesn’t lay that out directly, so I’m not sure we’re even meant to have it in mind as a takeaway. If only the movie featured a post-credit sequence where the camera slowly zooms in on a large pile of videos stacked against a wall, with the “Fox Maxine” tape somewhere near the bottom. Instead, I’m sitting here unsure of whether or not this is a plot hole or just a thread for audiences to wonder about in their free time.
After streaming MaXXXine, check out all the upcoming horror movies heading to theaters and streaming in the near and distant future.