THE EVOLUTION OF THE FINAL GIRL
BY ZION BUSH ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF GRACE CALLAHAN
Few things are worse than being trapped in a horror movie. Being trapped in one and watching everyone around you make the worst decisions ever might be one of them.
But for decades, horror movies have given us one character who manages to make it out alive, the “Final Girl.”
The actual term itself became popularized by film scholar Carol J. Clover in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.
Back in the ‘70s, being the final girl wasn’t really a dream job. Just look at Laurie Strode in “Halloween” (1978). She’s babysitting when a masked killer starts hunting her. A pretty normal night has just turned into a fight for her life.
Sally from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) is another example, where she spends most of the movie running from her attackers before finally escaping. Then there’s Jess from “Black Christmas” (1974), one of the first examples of the final girl archetype.
These women weren’t necessarily trying to take down the killer. They were just trying to make it through the night alive.
By the ‘80s, the final girl got tired of running for her life and started to get a little better at handling herself. Nancy Thompson from “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984) is a great example. After realizing Freddy Krueger isn’t going to leave her alone, she comes up with a plan, sets up traps, and actually beats him at his own game.
Ginny from “Friday the 13th Part 2” (1981) also gets creative when she uses Jason’s past to her advantage. Even Wendy from “The Shining” (1980) has to fight back, doing whatever she can to protect herself and her son. Surviving was still the goal, but they were starting to do more than just run and scream.
Then “Scream” (1996) came along and slightly changed the game. Sidney Prescott is stuck in a slasher movie where everyone around her seems to know the rules yet still makes the worst decisions possible. The difference is, Sidney actually learns from what’s happening around her instead of just becoming another victim.
“The Cabin in the Woods” (2012) also had fun with horror tropes through Dana Polk. She thinks she’s in a pretty standard horror movie before things start to get even weirder. By this point, the final girl was doing more than surviving a killer, and horror movies were starting to play around with the idea of what a final girl could be.
These days, the final girl doesn’t really have a distinct definition. She can be even more willing to fight back, she can be even more ruthless, and she can even be more than one person.
Grace in “Ready or Not” (2019) is one of my favorite examples. She’s fighting for her life in a wedding dress while her in-laws try to kill her. She’s bloody and probably more brutal than the people trying to kill her. Then, there’s Sam and Tara from “Scream” (2022) who have to deal with Ghostface together as sisters, using their combined knowledge to survive.
At the end of the day, the final girl has come a long way from just being the one who survives until the end of the movie. She's a huge part of what makes slashers so fun to watch.
It doesn’t matter whether she's outsmarting the killer, fighting back, or barely making it out alive. Half the fun is watching her figure out how to survive when everyone else seems like they’re trying to do the exact opposite. Horror keeps changing, and so does the final girl. So it’s a wonder what she'll look like in the next generation of horror.
