Final Girls

Final girls. I’ve been recently thinking about them from the amount of horror that I’ve read and watched. They are majorly the same. White, young, and virginal. Something that from when I was younger I kind of found uninteresting. Not that the final girls themselves are uninteresting for being this.

No, far from it.

But the girls themselves being sort of similar in that regard was what disinterested me. Since there are a few that weren’t the same. Like Laurie Strode, Nancy Thompson, and Alice Hardy. Each fought to save their lives in different ways. And they each had wonderful different personalities from each other. Aside from being nice girls.

Though for the most part they are the same Ingenue Archetype.

They survive things that their friends don’t always do so. Fighting for their lives and sometimes saving other people. Laurie Strode is the best example out of the three. Being smart and trapping the killer. Like Nancy. Alice wasn’t terrible and she did her best to fight off Pamela in the first Friday the Thirteenth. I know I’m saying a spoiler, but the movies have been out for a long while. If you don’t know she’s the killer that’s on you and not me.

Anyway. There are rare examples of the Final Girl not being some virginal pure girly girl. Such as Sidney Prescott from Scream. One of the very few Final Girls who I have ever seen be allowed to enjoy sex and live. Along with one of her friends for the first movie. Then there’s Ash Williams from Evil Dead. Sure, the first movie Ash wasn’t much of a character, but Bruce gave him more life in the rest of the sequels. Giving him a lot more depth and such. As well as a Final Child in Andy from Child’s Play. One of the very few characters that can be labeled as such. It’s still impressive to me they got Alex, the man who played Andy in the beginning, to play an adult version of the character for the T.V series.

Along with the end of the Curse of Chucky movie.

I should also mention the useless Final Girls. The ones that only survived because the movie needed a survivor. And the writers were too lazy to give these girls decent personalities or smart motivations. Because they had to fill a quota and all that other crap. One that comes to mind is Sarah from the reality show Halloween movie. That girl didn’t do anything aside from being a damsel in distress screaming at the top of her lungs. Along with a few other girls in different series that survive because they were helped.

Princess from the Chrome Skull movies. A prostitute who lost her memory thanks to the killer Chrome Skull. Who only spoke through text message. A thing that would have been interesting if the Final Girl wasn’t so annoying. And acted like she was a child or something.

I don’t hate those Final Girls, but I do find them irritating. Especially if the movie was somewhat decent aside from them. It feels like the writers just didn’t want to try and make them better or anything. The bare bones of a decent character is there. They’re right there and it really irritates me when they don’t try. But that’s the problem with Final Girls from the 2000’s. Late or early. They have potential but for whatever reason the writers barely cared to try anymore.

Though with Princess at least she was a subversion of virginal Final Girls as well. Even if she was annoying and needed everyone else to save her.

Recently there are a few Final Girls that subvert a lot of the tropes. Such Izzy from ‘The Last Final Girl’. Jade Daniels and Letha Mondragon from the Indian Lake trilogy. I was surprised that there were two final girls in that one. And the book that I’m recently listening to ‘The Final Girl Support Group’ with Lynnette. Which is somewhat of what the title says. Where a bunch of girls who survived one terrifying calamity or another meet to speak about their experiences.

It is one of the few things that touch upon Final Girls after the movies over. How they just lived on after their terror is over. There is a movie that touches upon it to. It’s called ‘Last Girl Standing’ which is somewhat good. Somewhat not that great as it makes the Final Girl, Camryn, is swiftly turned into a crazed lunatic hallucinating her killer and murdering her co-workers at a party. I won’t spoil the ending, but it just feels so stupid.

So very stupid.

Even the Halloween series handled Laurie Strode surviving Michael repeatedly better. Even if it was terribly written a few times. Like the recent trilogy of her becoming a bad ass survivalist and such. It also presented Laurie’s worries about Michael getting free as not just crazy talk but a legitimate fear in my book. It also showed how these fears can harm your relationship with friends even better.

Anyway. As much as I adore these, I do hope we get better Final Girls in movies soon. Ones that aren’t virginal pure and push the ‘sex bad’ narrative. That we get more than white girls being the Final Girls. Hell I hope we get more Final Boys. A trans man Final Boy would be something that I would love to see.

Even play if I got the chance.

I want a character that doesn’t just survive because the studio says they must. I want a complex Final Girl or Boy that survives because they fought back. They fought back dirty, hard, and didn’t relent. They were smart and when the bad guy went down, they bashed their skull in with whatever they had on hand. Hell, they can even kill the slasher with their own hands if necessary. Horror needs less white, virginal, and young survivors.

Especially ‘young’ as I’m tired of watching teenagers be survivors. I want to see more grown-ups survive slashers. Even if I got to make them myself.