Women in Horror: The Evolution of the Final Girl

Written by Tom Moore

Triumph is a word often associated with those who rise from the ashes of their struggles to make their mark and overcome those that oppose them. Whether it’s a no-name boxer from Philadelphia taking on the best in the world to become the Italian Stallion or a group of rebels looking to take down a galactic empire, these underdogs have always made audiences smile by emphasizing what triumph really means.

While 2018 saw women achieve plenty of milestones, in just the first three months of 2019 women have been a dominant force on the big screen. After a decade-long incubation, Alita: Battle Angel was not only a genuinely good adaptation of an anime (which doesn’t come too often) but it gave us a complex and kick-ass performance from Rosa Salazar. Rebel Wilson even shed her supporting actress skin and gave a hilarious performance in Isn’t It Romantic, breaking down rom-com tropes and showcasing her skills as a leading lady.

Unfortunately, some groups still want to keep women out of the spotlight. Just look at what happened with Captain Marvel.  Large, overwhelmingly male hordes tried so hard to put a bad mark on the film before it even came out, that Rotten Tomatoes had to change their policy on audience scores. However, like a true hero, Captain Marvel and the actress who plays her, Brie Larson, have smashed box-office expectations and undoubtedly changed the landscape for the MCU as well as superhero films in general.

Now, while I have a deep appreciation for these recent milestones, I just can’t shake a feeling that there’s not enough love being given to women of a specific genre. As a horror fan, I’ve seen more strides lately to show more representations of women that are unique and complex rather than the more damaging representations that are basically made fun of in films like Scream and Cabin in the Woods.

To say that women haven’t been represented well in horror would be an unbelievable understatement. More often than not, women can be defined by two kinds of sexist tropes. There’s the “whore” trope, where women who are more sexuality active and promiscuous have to be punished for their “sinful” behavior and often bite the dust first. Then there’s the “virgin,” more commonly known as the “final girl,” whose displays of innocence and purity make her worthy of survival. Add in some gratuitous female nudity just to please male audiences and a genre admittedly over-crowded by male directors and writers and you have a toxic environment for women.

Thankfully, things have started to change and these tropes that have defined women in horror for so long are now being re-shaped, called out, and pretty much thrown away entirely. There are obviously still some bad apples in the bunch with films like Hell Fest and Truth or Dare, but there are generally more efforts to break past stereotypes and create stronger and more complex female leads that deserve a spotlight of their own.

What’s interesting about these women and their roles is how they’ve sort of taken the old parts of the equation (sexuality, innocence, and “final girl” status) to create something new. Unlike in the past, female leads now share a sense of control over how they represent themselves.

One of my personal favorite series, Happy Death Day, actually features a lead that breaks from the often-sexualized sorority girl to a confident and flawed character that’s tough not to love. When looking back at films like the 2006 remake of Black Christmas, sorority girls are usually shown as shallow and sexual, with alcohol in hand and mean comments to follow. While the series’ protagonist, Tree Gelbmen, played by Jessica Rothe, starts off a little cold, each time she repeats another day, she looks at her mistakes or flaws and works towards changing them. Her growth is personal and doesn’t tie into her needing to be sexualized or be the “sorority girl” stereotype—a rarity that Rothe, herself, has even noted.

In an interview with Newsweek, Rothe touches upon Tree’s strong and inspiring character traits that make her a “dream come true.” When discussing Tree’s not so perfect persona, Rothe adds that Tree is “not afraid to be messy and flawed and make mistakes and learn and change and grow. I think that that kind of art is so rarely written for women in Hollywood, especially in genre films.”

The 2019 sequel, Happy Death Day 2 U, highlights this perfectly, as she must SPOILERS AHEAD decide between living in a world where her mom is still alive or one where Carter (Israel Broussad) is still her boyfriend. What made her decision to go back to be with Carter so impactful to me was that it’s not sexually driven, but instead is made for personal growth. The decision was based on Tree being over her past struggles and being ready to move on to a brighter future. THIS is what makes Tree a complex character that differs from past tropes and why she is such a strong and important character to have in the genre.

Another Blumhouse hit, Cam, delves into the lives of cam-girls and gives its protagonist, Alice, played by Madeline Brewer, a control of her sexuality that is unique to the genre. Cam-girls have often been displayed as sexual deviants with no rules or who put themselves in harm’s way, but that’s not the case in Cam. Alice is shown to be incredibly resourceful and thoughtful about her actions and embraces the idea of Alice taking pride in her sexuality, not to use it to please other people.

The “rules” that Alice puts into place for herself are of her own free will and display her own views of sexuality. With her being in control of how she’s viewed, Alice has a control that isn’t seen much in the genre for women and she is only punished, with an entity taking control of her account, when she gives up that control to please others. Even the amount of nudity felt controlled and that’s something incredibly rare in the horror genre.

A lot of credit needs to go to writer Isa Mazzei, who actually had some experience to bring to the film. Yep, that’s right, Mazzei used to be a cam-girl herself and came up with Cam’s subject to bring a more accurate representation to the profession. In an interview with moveablefest.com, Mazzei describes how she utilized her personal experiences in order to create a more complex character that deals with complicated problems, as the film also delves into how the profession makes Alice viewed by other people and her family.

“At the end of the day, she’s a better character. She’s more nuanced, more complicated, and she has more depth to her because she is the three of us [Mazzei, Brewer and director Daniel Goldhaber] bringing our experiences into her and it’s pretty cool the three of us built this person together,” said Mazzei.

It’s also worth noting how Brewer and Goldhaber work together to create a visual style for Alice and why her sense of control is a vital part of Cam. In an interview with Refinery29, Brewer discusses how control is a big part of being a cam girl and that reflecting that with Alice was a major part of her character. “Cam-girls get to choose how much they do or do not show, so [the director Daniel Goldhaber] and I wanted [Cam] to have that same feeling, that [I had] the same power and control,” said Brewer.

On the other side of the spectrum, women don’t have to be seen as completely innocent to be worthy of surviving. Rather, female leads don’t have to be held to perfect standards that represent holiness and all that is good just to be capable of surviving. Their flaws are what can make them both memorable and a new final girl entirely.

One of my favorite films of 2018, The Strangers: Prey at Night, actually features this kind of final girl in the form of Kinsey, played by Bailee Madison, as a rebellious and troubled teen who must now fend off three horrifying strangers. What’s interesting about how Kinsey is portrayed is that there’s a bit of role reversal with her older brother, Luke, played by Lewis Pulman.

Luke is the one who is shown to be the victim and the one who is sort of the perfect child. His parents see him as the more wholesome person, he’s initially against killing the Strangers, and really he is more of the victim than the savior. Kinsey, on the other hand, is the complete opposite: she’s being sent to boarding school for bad behavior, she smokes, and she’s shown to be willing to do whatever gruesome task it takes to survive.

There’s even a scene that shows this role reversal perfectly. Luke is pointing a gun at one of the Strangers, Dollface, but refuses to shoot because he’s scared. Kinsey is incredibly frustrated with him and even screams at him to give her the gun so she can shoot Dollface.

Now, Kinsey isn’t just shown to be hardened and cold the whole time. There are plenty of moments of her and Luke reminiscing about good times to escape the darkness they are currently in and there’s even a scene of Kinsey and her mom, played by Christina Hendricks, trying to hash out their differences. Scenes like this show Kinsey’s complicated personality and showcase that she isn’t just made up of either her innocence or troubled side, but is a mix of the two. All of this shows that Kinsey is a symbol of this new final girl that isn’t worthy of survival based on how “good” she is but is worthy because of her willingness to survive.

With a new age for women in the horror genre, there’s also a message of not conforming to genre norms or playing into what the audience wants. Women have the freedom in the genre for self-expression and new ideas and this couldn’t be more present in the feature debut of writer/director Mitzi Perione, Braid.

The film is a psychological horror thriller that follows two women, played by Imogen Waterhouse and Sarah Hay, as they end up in a horrifying game of make-believe after deciding to rob their friend Daphne, played by Madeline Brewer again, to pay back a vengeful drug lord. With this relatively simple concept, Peirone crafts a trippy and insane film that delves into the minds of its female characters and their views on the world.

Peirone doesn’t make them crazy, necessarily, but instead has more contemplative moments with the characters debating whether they belong in reality or in this make-believe world. Even through the film’s trippier moments, the three women are shown to be aware of their struggles and capable of shifting through their own unique madness. This is something that Perione highlights in an interview with Rue-Morgue as she discusses how their growing madness and self-reliance makes them more complex characters than what are normally seen and how she wants to create something of her own that’s unapologetic in style.

“To me, the girls aren’t crazy; it’s like they have too much soul for one body, and that’s how you get the feeling you’re not fit for reality,” said Peirone, “the characters are rock-solid, self-reliant women, and they don’t need anybody else, and in that way, they’re beautifully selfish.”

In a separate interview at the film’s premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Peirone even joked that these women actually never even talk about boys. It’s a film that’s fully in the female perspective and is something that will hopefully happen more often in the horror genre.

Finally, sorry for the pun, there’s a new kind of final girl. No longer does a final girl have to be the good girl teen at a summer camp or high-school girl trying to escape a masked killer, but older women have come into the genre to bring new, more nuanced, complex scream queens to the big screen.

Even at the age of 46, Australian actress Toni Collette has become an easily recognizable scream queen in the horror genre with appearances in films like Krampus and Velvet Buzzsaw. However, her role as Annie in Ari Aster’s 2018 hit, Hereditary, is what cements her as a bonafide modern-day scream queen.

In the film, Collette’s Annie struggles with the death of her mother as well as SPOILERS AHEAD her daughter and begins to discover a horrifying truth about their ancestry. Annie’s grief, anger, and shock slowly grow throughout the film and even Collette has talked about how it affects her and her relationships. To her son, played by Alex Wolff, and husband, played by Gabriel Byrne, she comes off as crazy and vengeful. The ways that she bottles up her emotions about the deaths and even the resentment towards her son for accidentally causing her daughter’s death come off completely genuine thanks to an award-worthy performance from Collette. Oddly enough, Annie even feels a sense of relief once she discovers the truth, as it makes her feel sane when others tell her that she’s not.

However, no deep-dive into redefined female horror leads can exclude a story about a girl from Haddonfield, Illinois that has been waiting to finish off an entity that’s been haunting her for 40 years. That’s right, no one could possibly forget Blumhouse’s Halloween sequel, which brings an older Laurie Strode–played once again by Jamie Lee Curtis–to face off against the legendary Michael Myers.

Strode isn’t the same, though, as the 40-year gap has caused her to have PTSD and become isolated from her family. While Laurie was the wholesome neighborhood babysitter back in 1978, she now is seen as crazy by everyone around her–in a similar way to Annie in Hereditary–and her isolation has made her more paranoid and fearful for what’s to come.

However, Strode never appears weak, rather becoming an absolute force to be reckoned with by the film’s gripping finale. She has protocols and traps set for Myers’s return and she is even shown to be training with every firearm she can find. This determination and training are even shown to trickle through her family, making her daughter, played by Judy Greer, resent her regardless of her past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72nlzdYX

Halloween is a true evolution for the legendary female horror icon and really brings Laurie Strode from being a victim to leading the charge. All of this is encapsulated by a performance from Curtis that’s forever burned into my head and, dare I say, one of the most connective and engaging performances across the horror genre. This evolution not only cements Curtis as the queen of all scream queens, but also Strode as one of the most complex, intriguing, and bad-ass final girls of all-time.

Now, there’s even more fantastic feminine horror performances in films like Suspiria, Anna and the Apocalypse, Climax, and A Quiet Place that cannot go unnoticed. Not to mention, with Jordan Peele’s Us hitting theaters this weekend, we could be seeing Lupita Nyong’o beginning her journey to being the next great scream queen. In short, there are plenty of great, complex, and strong female performances out there—especially in horror. So, next time you’re scouring the film landscape looking for strong female leads, you won’t skip out on horror.