(ANALYSIS) As someone who regularly writes about religious themes in movies, I keep my eyes out for potential stories everywhere — and I’ve been intrigued by the “X” trilogy from the beginning. 

The horror trilogy, which recently concluded with “Maxxxine,” gave hints in its first two installments that were impossible to ignore. 

In “X,” the first movie, it’s revealed that the trilogy’s protagonist, Maxine, is the daughter of a preacher. In “Pearl,” the focus occasionally lingers on a radio that’s blaring a fire-and-brimstone style of evangelism. 

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Both movies are otherwise void of religious messaging and are, in fact, wildly antithetical: They each feature a protagonist who’s obsessed with stardom, who would do anything to get it and who produces pornography as a step along the way. 

They’re meant to be sexy, gory, fun slasher movies, which they are — meant to channel the vibes of a B-horror movie from the 1980s. They just channel the vibes of a B-horror movie a little too well, however, often lacking depth or a meaningful message. 

Audience members may walk away from the first two movies in the “X” trilogy believing they’re meant to have picked up on a meaning: maybe something about purity culture, womanhood or aging; maybe a warning about the perils of chasing stardom. But even the intended message is unclear. By contrast, the message of “Maxxxine” is strangely and abhorrently strong, creating a narrative ruckus that doesn’t feel warranted or earned. The strong religious themes of this final part are almost entirely out of place, in-your-face judgments of the world based on mere wisps of ideas from the first two movies. 

The movie starts well enough, picking up on the threads from “X.” Maxine, who’s survived the haunted house slasher of Texas — not without some scars — has made it to L.A. and has made a name for herself as a popular adult film star. The setting is the ‘80s in full swing, with special regards to the Moral Majority, right-wing protestors flooding downtown and the satanic panic. Another threat are the serial killers lurking in the shadows: the Night Stalker and the mysterious killer of the movie’s invention, who’s kidnapping and killing young sex workers, depositing their corpses with satanic marks on them. 

Maxine is cast in a horror film, what she sees as the next step on the career ladder. But the killer continues to target people close to her, and the threat of becoming the next victim — as well as being discovered for the crimes of her past — starts closing in. 

The movie isn’t particularly strong from the start, but it is fun. The cops investigating the murders bring an off-kilter comedy to the movie that’s more cringey than enjoyable, and it seems as though the frequent cutaways to crowds protesting the adult film industry are going to constitute the third time in this trilogy that religion plays a role without meaning or achieving anything. 

Then, in the third act, the movie takes a wild shift. It’s revealed at last that the killer is Maxine’s father — a character hardly mentioned, never shown. He can’t stand what his daughter has become, so he’s started a fundamentalist cult in his home determined to punish those who are vulgar sinners. It’s such an overexaggerated way to express the sentiment “conservative Christians are bad” that it almost feels like a parody. 

At least the movie has a message, right? It is, after all, so determined to have one. 

In a laughably heavy-handed scene in which the movie lays out its core intention, Maxine and the director of her movie have a conversation about their intentions for the horror film they’re making together. 

“I say, if the pearl-clutching, Moral Majority types are gonna protest your work, you might as well make it bloody mean something,” the director says.  

Maxine’s horror movie is the clear parallel to the trilogy, a controversial piece of art that captures hearts and minds despite the hate it’s received from people who object to it’s perceived sinfulness. 

But here’s the kicker: The “X” trilogy wasn’t controversial. Sure, it was gory, it was gross, it was sexy and it was vulgar. It just wasn’t controversial. Quite frankly, Christians didn’t care. 

For starters, it wasn’t made for or marketed to Christian audiences: Distributed by A24, regularly a topic of conversation on X and TikTok, the movies are meant for a younger, more secular crowd that likely already has a dislike of the religious right, a political voting bloc that endures to this day. It’s true that occasionally a show or movie that wasn’t meant for religious audiences will become the target of a Christian protest, whether that be a boycott or petition or other social media uproar, but that hasn’t even happened here. 

These movies hardly have a message to begin with, and the message they do have is, as the saying goes, preaching to the choir. 

It’s not the first time this year that a movie’s main message has been a knock against zealously right-wing Christians, and I daresay it won’t be the last. For the most part, movies of this genre — “Maxxxine,” yes, and others like “Immaculate” — have touted themselves self-righteously, seeming to believe they’re singlehandedly destroying Christian nationalism.

Instead, they’re not reaching a crowd that has any real power to create good change in the parts of religion that are harmful, and if they did, they’d do nothing more than increase the divide. It begs the question: Do movies like “Maxxxine” mean anything at all? 

Jillian Cheney is Religion Unplugged’s Senior Culture Correspondent. She writes about film, TV, music, art, books and more. Find her on X @_jilliancheney.