Going in, this was one of my most anticipated movies of the year. I loved X and Pearl, and ever since I found out there was going to be a third film, I have been really excited to see how this trilogy would come to an end. However, as much as I wanted it to be great, this one disappointed in nearly every way. Not only does it fail to reach the same level as its predecessors, it’s a truly bad movie and one I just didn’t enjoy at all despite how much I was expecting to love it. 

Right off the bat, it introduces so many different ideas. Maxine is trying to make it as an actress and fulfill her goal of becoming a star, she’s experiencing PTSD after the events of X, there are protesters in Hollywood, there’s an investigation plotline following the night stalker, there’s Kevin Bacon’s character and all of the sequences involving him. Thematically, a lot of these should work in a sequel to X; they aren’t bad ideas, but the movie is trying to do too much. It doesn’t have the time to explore all of these storylines in a single movie, and so in the end they all end up feeling half baked and the movie as a whole incredibly overstuffed. 

The entire runtime is filled with setups without many payoffs. Of the three movies it’s easily the lightest on the action, but there’s hardly any substance in the story to make up for it, creating a surprisingly boring experience. Both of the previous movies touched on ideas of filmmaking and stardom in clever ways, and I feel like it could have done so much more with that by setting this movie in Hollywood, but like the rest of the film, it just doesn’t do enough and wastes the concept. 

There are moments where it feels like it’s trying to do something clever or meta but, once again, it doesn’t properly develop it. It keeps hinting at an interesting idea, but doesn’t pay it off and feels like the movie thinks it’s smarter than it is. It all comes together in an incredibly rushed and messy finale. Rather than paying off all of the ideas that were set up earlier in the movie, it kicks off the third act with a big twist where it introduces an entirely new threat. In theory, this reveal could work as an ending to the movie and the trilogy as a whole, but it just didn’t do anything to set it up. 

Because of this, the movie ends on a whimper with a third act that feels rushed and doesn’t properly resolve any of the conflicts that have been present throughout the rest of the film. One of the most interesting things about these movies is that each one is paying homage to a different era of filmmaking. X is a tribute to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and feels like a slasher film from the 70s. Pearl is a tribute to The Wizard of Oz and feels like it’s pulled right out of the golden age of Hollywood. This movie is a tribute to 80s B movies and slasher flicks, and I feel like it doesn’t find as much to do with that style as the previous films did. As a result, of the three I thought this was easily the least interesting on a visual and cinematography level. 

I couldn’t wait for this movie and I wanted to see how Ti West would bring his trilogy to a close, but the film itself never actually justifies its existence. It never brings home any of the running themes or takes the main character in an interesting new direction, it purely exists to capitalize on the two previous films and make a full trilogy of these movies. The first two worked perfectly as a pairing, but this movie didn’t really do anything to elevate the franchise as a whole. It’s just a pointless return and will easily remain my biggest disappointment of 2024.