Mia Goth has yet to have a body part embedded in wet cement at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theater – a place her starlet role in the 1980s-set meta-slasher “MaXXXine” would kill for. What Goth is an old hand at is having her head rubbed with weatherproof slime to make a lifelike cast.

She’s had it done for a few films, including a pretty stressful session for Marvel’s upcoming “Blade.” “I remember being very tired and a little bit hungry. I went in and we did the cast and I actually had to rip it off because I needed a breather and a cup of tea,” Goth says of the incident, which turned out to be good practice for a similar scene in “MaXXXine” (now in theaters).

Being covered in slime is, frankly, one of Maxine Minx’s lesser worries in director Ti West’s ambitious, blood-soaked horror trilogy. In 2022’s “X,” Maxine is the sole survivor of a porn film crew after a 1979 massacre perpetrated by an elderly Texas couple, including the villainous wife Pearl, also played by Goth. (The actress played a younger version of her as a murderous, fame-hungry farm girl circa 1918 in the prequel “Pearl”).

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MaXXXine meets Maxine in 1985, when the now successful porn star has a chance to break into the mainstream in Hollywood when she is cast in a high-profile horror sequel. Unfortunately, she also becomes the target of a mysterious killer while the Night Stalker stalks the streets of LA.

From first filming “X” to her current lead role in “MaXXXine,” Goth’s own star has grown – even going viral on TikTok – and the 30-year-old actress sees parallels between herself and the equally “determined” Maxine: “We knew what we wanted and we went after it.” West adds: “She was absolutely willing to prove to herself that she could carry a movie.”

Have you ever been touched by a film? “MaXXXine” is for you

West tackles a range of themes over the course of his trilogy, from fame and celebrity to the Moral Majority and Satan Panic of the ’80s. But he also wanted to explore how characters are influenced by different eras of cinema in order to appeal to a film-loving audience, even those who aren’t horror fans.

With “X,” whose tone recalled “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” West wanted to show “the entrepreneurial DIY character who’s trying to make a little movie outside the system and carve out his own niche,” he says. Then “Pearl,” a Technicolor nightmare influenced by “The Wizard of Oz” and old Disney films, about “someone who’s unhappy with his life and sees the glitz and glamour of the movies as the grass on the other side: If I had a life like that, it would be better.”

And with “MaXXXine,” which is inspired by “dark, sleazy” films like “Vice Squad” and “Angel,” the 43-year-old filmmaker wanted to recapture his own experiences visiting a video store in the 1980s: “There are endless films that seem offensive, subversive and interesting.”

“MaXXXine” gives the horror finale girl a dangerous twist

In the trilogy, Goth portrays two very different characters: Pearl, the jealous woman with a violent past, and Maxine, the vicar’s daughter who lives by the mantra, “I will not accept a life I don’t deserve.” “She holds a grudge. She’s hungry to prove herself to the world and, more importantly, to herself,” Goth says of Maxine.

And with her in particular, West wanted to reinvent a well-known stylistic device: “A big part of it was trying to make sure the last girl didn’t act like one.” In “X,” Maxine escapes and ends up running over Pearl’s head in a cruel way, and in “MaXXXine” she is no joke either, when she points a gun at a creepy guy in a Buster Keaton cosplay and rams her heel into a rather sensitive part of his body.

“She’s fully aware that she has little to no control over the people around her and the situations that might happen around her, but she’s in full control of her decisions and her actions and she has the fearlessness and courage to act on them,” Goth says. “It’s fun to be the one holding the gun and taking matters into her own hands.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New ‘MaXXXine’ concludes a bloody horror trilogy that loves movies