A late night walk in the park sounds like a glorious way to clear your head after a long day… That is, if you’re a man. For a woman, this same walk is a foggy, moonlit spooky-fest where you’re constantly checking over your shoulder for a pursuer, wishing you’d worn slouchy jeans, and clutching your keys in a closed-fist for some semblance of safety. It can be very scary out there for women.
In the real world, we see horror stories every day of women being victimized or becoming the subject of true crime documentaries (it was the husband!), but in horror movies and on the big screen, it can be the opposite. Slasher films and horror sagas, in recent years, have empowered women to become their own leading lady–and more importantly, their own hero.
You'd never see Laurie Strode from Halloween waiting around for some white knight to come and save her from her perils–no way–she's going to be out there with a coat hanger, a kitchen knife, or some makeshift weapon taking out her own pursuer. She's no ordinary female and she's certainly not the victim of her story, she's stronger than that, smarter than that, and she's the underdog fighting male-coded oppressors that everyone’s rooting for.
She is one of the original “Final Girls.”
Femme Fatale
Classically, women are portrayed in the entertainment world as a damsel in distress. In every movie, it seems, there’s always some woman trapped on top of a tall building waiting for a heroic superman or even a giant gorilla to scoop her up and save her. As many ladies know, this is certainly not the case in our realities. None of us have the time to wait around for some random, cape-wearing dude to come and save us from the dangers of the world. Soccer moms, working women, tough ol’ grannies, rambunctious tías, and that one mail lady who’s faithfully delivered to your house for over a decade, all know that we’re not victims. So why is it that women are always portrayed as such?
Perhaps the male-gaze or the patriarchal lean of modern society has swayed modern feminine portrayals in our common lore. However, there’s one genre that spearheads a movement of some rather diverse portrayals of women: Horror.
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From Prey to Slay
In a way, horror movies teach us how to survive. Strangely, most of us have been watching horror movies all of our lives and never realized that it’s actually a sleeper-agent tutorial to outlast the most horrific nightmares of the world. While we’re being hypnotized by a slasher movie, undoubtedly sprinkled with some fancy VFX gore, spooky masks, and a plunging v-neck sweater, you’re subliminally considering the rules by which the genre must heed. According to Jamie Kennedy, one of the main actors from the Scream saga, “There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie...” And being female isn’t a terrific start.
Women (especially women who break the “rules”) are usually the first to get smoked. However, the last one standing, or the “Final Girl,” is almost always a woman. But what’s the difference?
The 2015 movie The Final Girls blatantly toys with the concept of the “Final Girl.” As the leading ladies, a group of highschoolers who find themselves in the midst of an 1980s horror film, attempt to survive this comically cruel world they realize the only way they can live is by both outsmarting the villain and by retaining their virtue–two critical components in the OG slasher flicks.
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We’ve all seen those 80s horror movies where some random teenagers get it on and almost instantly get picked off by the k!ller, so I’m not saying all of the tropes in the movies are empowering for women–given some of the most common female caricatures in horror movies are “The Dumb Blonde,” “The Floozy,” and “The Ugly Old Hag.” Within the horror genre, none of those female characters ever actually survive in the end. It’s “The Virgin” who outlasts the temptations and the darkness of the psychotic killer. Chaste, wholesome, and shining their feminine light on the cursed battlefield of their movie, this dated and simplified main character trope has been thankfully updated. Naturally, there’s probably some religious connotations to this entire angle, but that’s an entirely new horse to tame.
The survivor has become far more complex, and as American Film Studies professor Carol J. Clover first coined in her horror film critique in 1992, the heroine is often the “survivor girl,” a female protagonist who has not only remained pure and virginal, but who is also the most cunning, resilient, and robust character on screen–usually even more so than the villain. This nuanced “Final Girl” has evolved over the years, dumping the traditionally binary stand of survival that’s based on your bedroom virtue and basing it on whether she actually deserves to survive. In the last decade, being the last surviving character meant you had a lot more complexity to you than some generically chaste babysitter.
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Laurie Strode from Halloween, one of the first “Final Girls” who became critically studied, actually has one of the most A-typical conclusions for her character’s story. While Laurie is left spending a lifetime becoming more prepared for battle, she still finds herself looking over her shoulder in fear, awaiting the day that Michael Meyers catches her by surprise even decades after their first encounter. Recently, the “neo-Final Girls” find themselves coming out on top at the end of the movie, flexing their win in the battle of good versus evil–a refreshingly simplified positive outcome that female leads rarely encounter in Hollywood.
Fight, Flight, or Freeze
Since the 2010’s, “Final Girls”are all fighters. Modern horror movies–like Happy Death Day, You’re Next, MaXXXine, and Ready or Not–make it clear that their “Final Girls” are not just surviving on dumb luck, good looks, or their s*xuality. These final girls are smart and they’re strong, like the women we know in real life. They cleverly outwit their stronger, crazier, more heavily-armed opponents using traps, camouflage, wit, and the element of surprise. Like in the real world, these women fight tooth and nail to survive throughout the film, and thus have earned their right to live (according to the laws of horror, of course).
A critic of modern films Audrey Fox argues that changes in the female lead characters have shifted from the “Damsel in Distress” to the “Final Girl,” finding their way into the horror genre as a reflection of reality. She argues that, “the changes within this character archetype are an indication of both evolving perspectives on women and larger societal shifts.” Meaning that movies are finally reflecting the strength we see every day with real women.
In the last couple of years, the idea of the “Final Girl” has shifted. Now, more nuanced, the oversimplification of surviving because of their purity has changed to the “Final Girl” being more like an actual, real world woman. Unlike any other genre in Hollywood, horror has captured the vitality of females pushing the limits of human capability for the sole purpose of survival–which is a tilt-shift of the mirror to society, as womanhood is constantly under bombardment.
Final Girl of Our Own Lives
We all want to be the “Final Girl.” As the last survivor of our personal saga, we aim to be clever, strong, and a dastardly opponent in the face of our oppressors. So as lame superhero movies depict female “heroes” as a sidekick to the main superman and as fantasy films show ladies as the ethereal temptress in the woods, horror movies show women as gritty heroes, taking the reins of their own lives. We can all try to be more like Naru in Prey, a witty native American survivalist with a level-head, unconventional weapons, and ingeniously brutal traps that ultimately earn her a win over the most notorious hunter in the galaxy. Because female-coded heroes may not always be physically stronger than the villain, but they’re always more cunning–just like women in the real world who aren’t enslaved by whatever secrets lie behind their bedroom door.
While there are other female tropes in horror movies that are slightly less empowering, it's the “Final Girl” who captures female horror fans’ attention as a role model, becoming our bloodstained, dirt-covered guiding light when life gets tough. The dream is, as the “Final Girl” of our own world, we'll never be scared of anything again, not even walking alone in a park at night.
