Redefining the Final Girl: Rebirth Through Violence

Horror, as a genre, is by and large comprised of films about the lives of women, for an audience made up of mostly women. As one of the few genres wherein women hold on average over 50% of screen-time, it is no surprise that 60% of horror fans are actually women. In my opinion, an integral part of why women love horror is what is possibly its best-known trope, the Final Girl. As is clear from the title of my blog, the Final Girl trope is one close to my heart. A term coined by Carol J. Clover, “Final Girl” is defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary as, “a trope in horror movies, referring to the female protagonist who remains alive at the end of the film, after the other characters have been killed, when she is usually placed in a position to confront the killer.” In its more misogynistic origins, the use of the Final Girl as a plot device sets up a face-off between a young woman and the male slasher villain, creating a hyper-gendered battle of the sexes meant to show how female purity can save a woman from male wrath. Yet, the Final Girls of late have not commonly been the ‘good girl’ of slasher films past.

In my opinion, the definition of the Final Girl is changing, as is her role within a film. Historically, the trope is defined situationally, and through character traits. The original Final Girl (think Laurie Strode and Nancy Thompson) is classically well behaved, studious, not promiscuous, and often brunette. While she faces off with the killer/monster, and perhaps kills them, she is not a violent character; she acts in self defense, not as an aggressor. Yet, the Final Girl has evolved since the 70s and 80s. And retroactively, the term is being applied to characters from the era who may not previously been considered Final Girls under the original definition. The ‘situational Final Girl’ is simply the last woman standing, the character in a slasher film who survives the longest, as a result of her idealized personality traits. However, ‘The New Final Girl,’ as I will refer to her, is defined by her character arc throughout the film, and how she comes out the other side--reborn and remade.

Sidney Prescott of SCREAM (1996), is a sort of transitionary Final Girl between old and new. SCREAM has a self-awareness of this trope, and purposefully has Sydney break it by having sex, and by experiencing catharsis for a past trauma by slaughtering the slasher-killer herself. It is this plot point that defines the New Final Girl in my eyes; she is reborn through violence. As a retroactive application of the term, CARRIE (1976) may hold the first true example of the New Final Girl. While Carrie may be an antihero, it is the image of a powerful woman--soaked in blood--exacting her revenge, that many New Final Girls have recreated (ex. THE WITCH, 2015). Her family and social traumas come to a head with the film’s iconic pig-blood prank, leading Carrie to achieve catharsis only by exploiting the full scope of her telekinetic power. While not every Final Girl has such literal superpowers, it is essential that she reach her full potential through violent action, and confront her past trauma with her own strength alone. This new definition of the Final Girl, brings us to 2005’s THE DESCENT.

THE DESCENT, starring Shauna Macdonald as Sarah Carter, employs the New Final Girl in all her new-found glory. After suffering the deaths of her daughter and husband, Sarah is brought down into an unexplored cave full of unimaginable horrors from which she emerges reborn, blood-soaked and badass (US ending). As perhaps the most iconic feminist horror film ever released, despite being directed by a man (Neil Marshall), THE DESCENT understands its female characters as complex: reckless and practical, physical and emotional, joyful and traumatized. Juno and Sarah become two sides of the same coin, both New Final Girls in their own right. Juno’s character arc runs parallel to Sarah’s, as she too lost a lover when Sarah’s husband died. However, Juno cannot be seen as the protagonist, as she undergoes no real personal change throughout the film. Sarah, on the other hand, is remade and refashioned by her experience in the caves. As Beth says to her, “the worst thing that could have happened to you has already happened and you're still here. This is just a poxy cave and here's nothing left to be afraid of, I promise.” By the end of a horror film, the Final Girl has nothing left to be afraid of, because the worst possible thing has already happened, and she survived it.

In recent years, the New Final Girl has found representation through the making of horror films with more intentionally feminist themes. In this vein, I particularly want to shine a light on 2019’s READY OR NOT. Samara Weaving’s character, literally a Final Girl named Grace, survives her murderous in-laws by triggering an ancient curse that leads to their gory deaths, and ends the film coated head to toe in their blood. While READY OR NOT has a high body count, it is not a traditional slasher, and demonstrates how the Final Girl in horror has become almost entirely uncoupled from the slasher sub-genre. Instead, the film is more concerned with Grace’s personal character development, wherein she finds new confidence and a sense of her own value. She learns never to bend to another’s will again.

What the ever-changing definition of this trope tells me most is that women’s involvement, both as fans and producers of horror content, is making an impact on the way women are represented in film. While the horror of the female experience has been central to the genre since its conception, the Final Girl’s journey through those horrors has not always been depicted with attention and care. Treating female characters as complex humans, who are not simply objects and catalysts for male characters to interact with, is what the New Final Girl archetype does best. Horror is concerned at an essential level with violence and violent acts, therefore, a film’s female protagonist must harness that violence in her ascension to Final Girl status.