Did you know that men are seen and heard twice as often as women in film? It’s a shocking statistic but with one major exception: horror. It is the only genre where women appear and speak as much as men. For decades, horror films have been revolutionizing the way women are viewed in entertainment and making strides to provide positive and equal representation, which in turn affects how women view themselves. In horror films, mainly slasher films, there has become a new trope known as the “final girl”. This girl is exactly what it sounds like, she’s a female in the movie who can make it to the end and sometimes defeat the slasher without dying. This was first introduced with Laurie Strode in Halloween, though the term “final girl” wouldn’t be used for many years later. Now in today’s media, the term gets used for most if not all slasher movies that end with one girl making it to the end. Now when we watch slasher films that seem like the female is the main protagonist, we are expected to find out whether the girl will make it to the end or not. But sometimes that is not always the case. There is the case where the girl makes it to the end but also does not “win” in the end because the killer still makes it out. But now in our society, women are still very much sexualized in films, even if she is the final girl. So it becomes now a choice, does she become an empowering final girl who is this badass girl that can maybe defeat the villain, or is supposed to be this sex symbol that we still root for and can maybe defeat the villain but has to show her body? The portrayal of women in horror films as the ‘final girl’ has evolved over time, reflecting cultural and societal changes, but continues to reinforce traditional gender roles through its portrayal of women as passive and sexualized victims, while also empowering them through their survival and triumph over the killer.
One of the first, if not the first example of a “final girl” is Laurie Strode from the Halloween series. She is the one who solidifies her place as a final girl from the moment she is shown on screen in the first Halloween (1978). She is shown as powerful, intelligent, strong, and very much capable of defeating Michael Myers. Halloween ultimately resolves lack by removing the outright feminine characters like Annie and Lynda earlier in the film, while allowing Laurie to remain only by reconstituting her as masculine. With her unisex name, boyish-looking button-downs, collared shirts, and sexual reluctance, Laurie has all the hallmarks of the “incipient masculinity” that make up the archetype. She possesses “masculine” gender traits like intelligence and strength, providing a sharp contrast to her friends Annie and Lynda, who hold little interest in academia and seem quite underdeveloped next to Laurie. Carpenter gives us reason after reason to root for Laurie, and that rooting continues even today, with the last movie of the series, “Halloween Ends” coming out and the audience still rooting for Laurie to defeat Myers, 42 years later. Time after time in every new version of Halloween, Laurie remains a strong woman who can always handle herself, no matter her injuries or how old she gets.
With Halloween becoming not just an iconic slasher film, but an iconic film in general cinema, Laurie Strode cements herself as the blueprint of what a final girl should be, not just with her actions, but how she is portrayed as a character of all genders can like, especially in an age where what women were and what we do is frowned upon and judged for seemingly no reason. But when creating a character that works in every factor, it’s easy for everyone to root for Laurie and make her the blueprint for slasher films and the final girl that would come up in the future. In various ways, Halloween’s Final Girl embodies many of the values of the radical feminism that burgeoned from the 1960s to the late 80s, when the film was released. Â
Once again we have an 80’s slasher film where the theme of a powerful female protagonist shows itself with Nancy Thompson in Wes Craven’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984). She is a 15-year-old girl who shows herself able to go toe-to-toe with the slasher of the film, Freddy Kreuger. She figures out who the killer of her friends is and even thinks of the idea to drag Freddy out of the dream world to defeat him. Unlike Laurie, however, we get a more feminine side of Nancy, she’s young and feminine but also not afraid to go against a powerful serial killer who finds joy in killing people in their dreams. We still get a teenager just like Laurie, but by bringing the age of Nancy down, even by a little, we get an entirely different perspective on how her mind works and gives us another reason to root for her because she’s at an age where most people would not expect her to be able to do the things she does in the movie or have the ideas that she comes up with or to even be able to somewhat defeat Krueger in the movies that she does. That is why she goes on to be in two more movies until her demise in the third movie, where her luck with being the final girl ran up for her. However, at the end of the first movie, while she becomes the “final girl”, she does not win at the end where after she thinks she has defeated Krueger, she gets in a car where her friends are somehow alive and the car locks itself and drives off, while Freddy grabs her mother, Marge, through the window, showing that he is still very much still alive and making it his goal to get Nancy.
While Laurie in Halloween, operates in an almost sexist way because of the way she was made to be perceived, Nancy is unapologetically herself and doesn’t care what others think, whether that be the characters in the movie or honestly, the people watching the movie. Nancy is also shown as this sign of purity or being a virgin, which is why Wes Craven originally imagines Krueger as a child molester going after kids in their dreams.Â
“Wes [Craven] wrote the most evil, corrupt thing he could think of. Originally, that meant Freddy was a child molester. Right while we were shooting…There was a huge scandal based around an area of single-parent yuppies in California known as South Bay. Child molesters had descended on this unsupervised flotsam of.. children. On the spot, we changed the script from child molester to child murderer, mainly so that Wes wouldn’t be accused of exploiting the South Bay case.”.Â
It gives another look to the movie, a sense of control, mainly of your body which gives another look to Nancy and what she is fighting against and what she defeats in the end, giving us a separate perspective than what we get with Laurie in Halloween.
Another iconic final girl is Sidney Prescott with the Scream franchise (1996-Present). Just like Laurie, Sidney is a 17-year-old high school student just trying to live her life. But she shows her versatility and strength throughout all of the movies she is in. Her character is what coined the term “final girl” for the first time. She is a character that is loved by everyone and her absence in the newest Scream movie was disappointing to avid Scream viewers who know Sidney to be a vital character to the franchise, the girl who started it all. There is every reason to love Sidney, she is a strong woman who grows as each movie passes and she learns from each movie and lets the audience know that she is and will always be a force to be reckoned with, no matter who the new Ghostface is. In Scream (1996) it’s evident from the very beginning that Sidney is already a very hypervigilant person. She deliberately has her bedroom door trapped by the cupboard door so that no one can enter without her explicitly allowing it. It’s notable that she also already has an established backstory when we are introduced to her, inviting automatic sympathy from the audience. Right from the beginning, we see that she’s not the type of person just to let people walk all over her or exploit her story. One of the most iconic moments in the film is when she punches Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) who refuses to respect her boundaries. Her justified anger and unwillingness to downplay it is an admirable trait that ensures she is never written off as a mere victim.
Her cleverness, bravery, and desire to help others even when the world hasn’t been kind to her is the mark of a continually and consistently developing character throughout the films, and it’s a trend that continues into each newest installment. In a genre filled with more than its fair share of female victims, we can look up to Sidney as an example of bravery and resilience in the face of trauma and violence. She’s only human and reacts to her circumstances as such, but at the same time, she won’t go down without a fight. Sidney’s actress, Neve Campbell has been playing the character for 28 years now and she always brought something new to the character and continued to make Sidney the unstoppable force we horror fanatics know and love to root for with every movie.Â
“Even though it seems her journey in the movies has come to an end, Sidney will forever be remembered as one of the few final girls whose character continued to reveal new layers that built upon her arc as the franchise progressed, making her the most consistently impressive final girl of all.”
Next on the list of iconic final girls is Deena Johnson. Where most of the women on this list are white and most likely heterosexual, we do a 180 with Deena Johnson of Fear Street (2021), who is a biracial lesbian and is proud of it. Where with a few of the women on this list like Sidney and Nancy; virginity, purity, and sex, in general, is a big topic with them, even if not explicitly said in the movie. But with Deena, she is proud of who she is, no matter who has a problem with that. A very important line said by Deena to her girlfriend, Sam is: “It’s not your future if you’re pretending to be someone else”. It is a line that not only encapsulates the film’s identity-driven core but also successfully sows the seed for the foundation of a watershed moment in the history of queer representation on-screen. From that moment on, the protagonists of Fear Street go on to wage a symbolic battle against demons of a different kind — homophobia, toxic masculinity, and sheer societal repression. We get to see Deena and Sam’s love on a different kind of level when they are forced to go back in time to 1666, into the bodies of Sarah Fier (Deena) and Hannah Miller (Sam) and we get to see different kinds of love that we don’t get to see in horror films, ever rarely with an openly wlw couple.Â
Like the other women on our list, she is determined to defeat the curse and the witches that come with it. In each of the trilogies of Fear Street, Johnson has shown tremendous force of willpower, individualism, and tenacity in believing to lead her own life and others to a brighter future. Deena inspires her friends to avenge the deaths of every victim who’s been sacrificed because of evil and they go on to fight the incoming dangers. She is a well-capable leader in guiding plots in the face of danger as shown when she, her brother, and the others prepared to battle against the killers to save Sam’s soul and avenge their loved ones and the future of Shadyside. She is a confident, outspoken member of Shadyside and while she can be seen as a bit of a misfit, she strolls through life even though she is struggling. She is a character that the audience can relate to, especially those who are a part of the LGBTQ+ and feel represented when they have characters like Deena in film trilogies like Fear Street and it is extremely easy to root for her when you can relate and she gives you every reason to continue to fight like she is.
Our latest and in my opinion, one of the best and different final girls on this list is Maxine from X (2022). Maxine is the pinnacle of the sexualized final girl with her body being out for a lot of the movie and even having a sex scene or two. Except Maxine is still the independent and strong woman we see in movies like Halloween and Scream. Maxine flips the script on horror movie fans with her presence of how she truly does not care what anyone thinks of her, she’s going to be a star, whether anyone likes it or not. As she says “I will not accept a life I do not deserve”. And she’s going to make sure of that, and there is no doubt from anyone.
Maxine is a big example of figuring out who you should root for, should you root for Maxine, the sex-positive main lead who you can tell is just as powerful as other final girls but maybe she’s showing a lot of skin, or do you root for Lorraine, played by an actress who has played final girls before and you have a feeling will make it to the end of this movie and is a pure, innocent, shy girl who just wants to help her boyfriend. With the trend of how slasher movies go, you would expect Lorraine to make it to the end, but she doesn’t. She instead goes out like a wimp and Maxine comes out on top, strong and carefree, continuing to shout her iconic line “I will not accept a life I do not deserve”. Maxine shows us that even if women are sexualized as they are in public, whether it’s their choice or not, we can still root for them is they are just as powerful as any other final girl, which is why she got her new movie: MaXXXine, which was just as good as the other past installments. Horror movies over the years have very much changed since the originals, and with that comes a new category, and even that changes a lot as the years go by. In the beginning, we had Laurie Strode, a strong babysitter who would continue to go on to fight her villain for 40 years. As the years have gone by, and we get more and more horror movies, we get more and more final girls, with each girl having their similarities and differences; some more than others. But as we move into the years, we get to see a new kind of final girl, girls like Deena and Maxine, those we haven’t seen in the past before. While the stereotype of women having to be a certain way has been very much flipped on its head with horror movies, movies like X remind us that that stereotype still very much exists but we will use it to our advantage to still be the strong powerful woman that we know we are, even against a raging serial killer.