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If you as us, spooky season is meant to be celebrated year-round. We’re talking watching horror movies whenever you like, and right now we’re ready to revisit some of our favorite horror movies featuring final girls. Who is the final girl of a horror film, you might ask? Well, besides the obvious connotation that the final girl is the last woman standing at the end of horror movies, there are a lot of tonal, societal implications about this horror genre trope.
The term was first coined by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women & Chainsaws: Gender in Modern Horror Film. Clover studied slasher films from the ‘70s and ‘80s and identified this specific archetype as a character, usually a teen girl or young woman, who can evade the villain of the horror film, has a final confrontation with the villain, and is the sole survivor of their group based on some sense of demonstrated moral superiority within the context of the story. That moral superiority was often the final girl’s purity or abstinence, and luckily horror has come a long way from sending that message about the type of woman who can survive a horror film.
Over the decades, we’ve seen this final girl trope manifest in so many ways in popular and independent horror films. Now that we’ve gotten to a point where we’re honestly spoiled with the type of horror films gaining traction and popularity, we’ve gathered some of our favorite final girls dating back to the 1970s and to today. From the early iterations of the final girl in Friday The 13th to the uncompromising ferocity of Ready Or Not, read on for some of our favorite examples of the final girl in horror movies.
Sally in ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’
The Texas ChainsawMassacre is one of the earliest films depicting the final girl. Marilyn Burns plays Sally in the independent slasher that’s become an absolute classic. Throughout Tobe Hooper’s film, Sally’s friends disappear one by one until she is the final girl standing. She evades Leatherface and his canibalistic family, ending the film with one of the most iconic images in horror.
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Laurie Strode in ‘Halloween’
Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode is probably the scream queen who reigns above them all. Curtis has played the role over five decades, but the 1978 John Carpenter and Debra Hill production started it all. Laurie and her friends spend nearly the entirety of Halloween being stalked and killed by Michael Myers — the Boogeyman. But Laurie, who doesn’t get into trouble or shirk her responsibilities thus demonstrating the morality of the final girl, is ultimately the one who has the final word…at least this time around.
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Ellen Ripley in ‘Alien’
Now here’s where the final girl trope gets a bit dicey. Despite the fact that Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley survives the explosion of the Nostromo and finishes the alien creature that goes after her crew mates in Alien, the film deviates from the classic slasher horror by aligning more with science fiction. However, I’d say that Ellen Ripley’s unwavering moral compass (she saves Jones the cat, for goodness sake!) puts her right alongside a number of final girls.
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Alice in ‘Friday The 13th’
Back on the slasher beat, 1980’s Friday The 13th also features an early final girl in Adrienne King’s Alice. Alice stays in line with Carol J. Clover’s originally analysis on the final girl trope. Alice doesn’t have sex in Friday The 13th, showing her moral superiority to her fellow camp counselors. She has a standoff with the film’s main villain, and though scathed, survives with entire film that spawned so many sequels.
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Nancy Thompson in ‘A Nightmare On Elm Street’
Another classic that’s gotten the reboot, remake, and really? Did we need to see Freddy Kreuger fight Jason Voorhees treatment is A Nightmare On Elm Street. This classic from Wes Craven features final girl Nancy Thompson, played by Heather Langenkamp. Nancy’s inclusion as a final girl has been agreed upon and contested over the years, especially considering the ominous ending. Still, of her teen friends, Nancy is the one who somehow makes it to the end.
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Sidney Prescott in ‘Scream’
Another Wes Craven staple, Scream subverts quite a few horror tropes within the first few minutes — do we have to talk about that Drew Barrymore moment? But Neve Campbell‘s Sidney Prescott might be one of the rare final girls who goes against the grain of the trope’s generally accepted definition. Sidney does have sex in the movie, subverting the idea that final girl characters have to exhibit some form of purity or abstain from sex to survive. The Scream franchise has spawned so many films and even a TV series. Where will the next film take Sidney and company?
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Thomasin in ‘The Witch’
Now that we’re into the 2010s, here’s where the broadness and flexibility of the final girl trope really starts to grow. The 2015 atmospheric horror film The Witch introduced audiences to Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin. One by one, each member of Thomasin’s family succumbs the wicked influence of the wild where they live, where suspicion grows and claims their sanity. By the end, Thomasin has a choice: Does she want to live deliciously? While this final girl might not hold up to Clover’s initial reading, it’s definitely a broadening of the initial, more narrow understanding of the trope.
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Adelaide Wilson in ‘Us’
Shifting away from slasher movies, the new voices and stories we’ve seen in the horror genre have really propelled the form forward — and reminded us that, yes, horror has always been that (final) girl. Jordan Peele started to scare audiences with his psychological horror Get Out. And with 2019’s Us, he holds a mirror up to audiences and asks if we like what we see. (To be clear, we love the moive — terrified by the idea that our doppelgänger would appear from an underground world to kills us.)
Lupita Nyong’o goes all-in as both Adelaide and Red, battling it out to either take their place above ground or protect their family. While Adelaide and her family make it out alive, Us has plenty of shocking moments and surprises along the way to really subvert expectations and keep us guessing.
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Grace in ‘Ready Or Not’
Another 2019 film that gave us a final girl to root for was Ready Or Not. No one really saw this horror film coming, and Samara Weaving’s turn as Grace has seriously catapulted the star to new heights. But it’s Grace’s survival instinct against her eccentric in-laws’ ritual that gets her out of death’s grip. Equal parts hilarious and horrifying, Ready Or Not quickly became a staple for the new age of the final girl.
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Dani in ‘Midsommar’
As beautiful and dream-like as Ari Aster’s Midsommar looks, you wouldn’t believe that it would be so sinister. With her relationship reaching a breaking point, Dani (Florence Pugh) joins her boyfriend Christian and his friends on a trip to visit a community in Sweden for their Midsummer festival. There, each member begins to disappear one by one, leaving Dani alone in the end. But if you can believe it, this story actually has a happy ending — for Dani, at least. File this film under the “good for her” sub-genre.
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