What actually happens
An audition with a serial killer on the news
It is 1985 in Los Angeles, and the Night Stalker murders are all over the news. Maxine Minx has only ever appeared in adult films, but she wins the lead in a new horror movie called The Puritan II. She tells her friend Leon and her colleague Amber James, and Amber invites her to a party in the Hollywood Hills. Maxine says no. She then goes to her second job at a live peep show, where a figure in leather watches her angrily from the dark.
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A walk home with a switchblade attached
The scene that most people squirm through happens early. Another performer, Tabby Martin, also invites Maxine to the Hollywood Hills party, and Maxine turns her down again. On her way home a man dressed as Buster Keaton follows her and traps her in an alley, holding a switchblade. Maxine draws a gun, orders him to strip, puts the barrel in his mouth and makes him perform a sex act on it. Then she crushes his groin under her boot.
A videotape with a return address nobody wants
Someone in leather drops off a police evidence VHS tape for Maxine. It holds the adult film she and her late friends tried to make six years earlier. She asks Leon to trace the tape, and meanwhile Amber and Tabby are murdered in the Hollywood Hills and their bodies are branded with satanic symbols. A private investigator named John Labat tells Maxine her past crimes will come out unless she goes to an address on Starlight Drive that night. Detectives Williams and Torres question her about her friends and get nothing. Her agent, Teddy Knight, agrees to help, Leon is slaughtered in his video store, and Maxine meets Molly Bennett, the star of the first Puritan film, who mentions a similar party. Labat chases Maxine across the Universal Studios lot with a gun. Maxine lures him into a trap, and with Teddy and her friend Shepard Turei she shuts him in his car and has it crushed by a junkyard compressor.
A house in the hills full of church people
Maxine goes to the Starlight Drive address, a house in the Hollywood Hills. Inside she finds Molly's dismembered body in a suitcase. The killer is her estranged father, Ernest Miller, a televangelist, and he is working with members of his ministry. They have been filming the murders to make a snuff film that will expose Hollywood as sinful. Miller believes he can still save his daughter, so his followers tie her to a tree for an exorcism, and he films that too. Detectives Torres and Williams interrupt with a shootout that kills Miller's followers and wounds Miller, which gives Maxine time to free herself. Both detectives are fatally wounded as they chase Miller. Maxine follows him with a shotgun to the Hollywood sign, where a police helicopter shows up.
The ending, explained
Maxine imagines a better version of events in which she is a celebrity who helped stop her father. She attends the premiere of The Puritan II, and in an interview she announces that the director, Elizabeth Bender, will make a film about her. Back in reality, she tells her father he gave her the divine intervention she needed, then shoots him in the face with the shotgun and kills him instantly. A month later she is still working on The Puritan II and hoping her success will never end. Amber, Tabby, Leon, Molly, Labat and both detectives are dead by this point.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is MaXXXine scary?
Somewhat, MaXXXine is a 3.5 out of 10. It has some subtle jump scares and a lot of gore, but the dread is low and gone when the credits roll.
How does MaXXXine end?
Maxine's father, a televangelist, turns out to be behind the murders. She shoots him with a shotgun and goes back to working on her horror movie a month later.
Does the dog die in MaXXXine?
No dog dies in MaXXXine, and no other animal dies either.
Is there a post-credits scene in MaXXXine?
No. MaXXXine has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
Who is the killer in MaXXXine?
The killer is Ernest Miller, Maxine's estranged father and a televangelist. He and members of his ministry film the murders to make a snuff film that is meant to expose Hollywood.
