
“I think the final girl trope continues to be so interesting because it’s constantly fluid.”įor Strauss-Schulson, changing the final girl trope is very suitable to 2015. They’re constantly being martyred or deified, and we’re still sort of struggling with the idea of a woman being anything other than that,” West says. “Women still have a hard time in horror films. “I think we’re in a period now where if you’re not doing Sidney, you have to specifically react against Sidney and make that clear,” she says. For West, Scream’s Sidney Prescott was a turning point for the final girl and actually ignited her interest in the horror genre. The late Wes Craven, in particular, was known for making his final girls (Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street and Sidney in Scream) flawed, brave, sexual and victorious. Though it was significant to see young women physically fight and outsmart a villain, earlier depictions of final girls had some obvious issues: they were shy and virginal, immediately dropped their weapon after thinking they had defeated the killer, and were ultimately rescued or comforted by a man.
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Clover defined the term “final girl” in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws, horror movie heroines have undergone several significant changes, explains Alexandra West, horror journalist and host of the podcast “ The Faculty of Horror.” And not all of them have been for the better West says that for every two steps forward the final girl takes, another film sets her one back. “It’s really not trying to relish in the pleasure of the deaths.” “I thought it was smart to tell a story about bereavement, loss and death in a genre that doesn’t take it very seriously at all,” says Strauss-Schulson, who lost his own father shortly before reading the script of The Final Girls.


Plunged into a world where her mother’s life can still be saved, Max decides her own isn’t the only one she wants to fight for. The situation is more complex than life or death for the main character Max (Taissa Farmiga), who’s mourning the sudden loss of her mother Amanda (Malin Akerman), an actress whose biggest role was as a doomed counsellor in Camp Bloodbath. “We’re playing the game we’re doing the rules,” Strauss-Schulson says about the horror-comedy, which follows a group of friends who team up with the fictional camp counsellors in the movie Camp Bloodbath and use horror tropes to defeat the evil, machete-wielding Billy Murphy. Fortin set out to make a movie that pays homage to the slasher genre while poking holes in its dated stereotypes: the shy virgin, the oversexualized mean girl, the jock, the villain who never dies and everyone’s inexplicable compulsion to make bad choices in near-death situations.

Director Todd Strauss-Schulson and writers Joshua John Miller and M.A. The Final Girls stars not one but several heroines facing off against a masked killer. Moody’s Last Girl Standing - both allowing the final girl to star in her own movie and not the killer’s. It joins two other recent movies that riff on the trope - Tyler Shields’ similarly titled Final Girl and Benjamin R. The Final Girls, playing at the Toronto International Film Festival as part of its Midnight Madness program, features a group of modern-day moviegoers sucked into a cult 1980s slasher flick.
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She’s one of the most recognizable tropes in a genre full of them but now the final girl is - finally - becoming the star.

For decades, “the final girl” has limped, scratched, jumped and stabbed her way to the end of horror movies.
