The Slasher Movie Final Girl: Trope Explained!

The Final Girl - Troped! One is the loneliest number.... especially when someone or something is trying to kill you. Welcome to WatchMojo’s Troped - the series where we deconstruct the cliches, archetypes, and story devices that won’t go away. In this episode, we’re taking a look at the Final Girl: the last woman standing in a slasher film who, after seeing her friends die at the hands of the killer, survives to tell the tale. Final girls throughout the history of the genre share more in common than their gender and their survivor status. In theory, she is the quintessential “good girl”, characterized by her above average moral restraint. She refrains from having sex, drinking, doing drugs, and other such deviant behaviors that so often get her peers killed. She’s also inquisitive and resourceful enough to devise a strategy to avoid sharing their fate. She is her own savior. All that being said, to be a final girl, the heroine doesn’t need to check every box on the list, and in practice, they rarely do. Bearing in mind that deviations from the textbook formula are to be expected, some version of the final girl can be found standing at the end of almost every classic slasher film. You can find examples of this trope dating as far back as the early 70s. But it wasn’t until Carol J. Clover’s 1992 book, “Men, Women, And Chain Saws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film,” that someone gave it a proper name. Clover saw the final girl not just as a character to be exploited and victimized for the pleasure of the genre’s predominantly male audience, but rather as an empowered female figure - one with whom male viewers come to identify and celebrate as she overcomes her oppressor. As one the earliest cited examples of the trope, Jess Bradford, the heroine of the 1974 Canadian Cult classic “Black Christmas,” is more of a proto-final girl. Appearing on-screen before the whole chastity element of the trope came into play, she is sexually active, pregnant and planning on getting an abortion. And yet, she is considered by many to be among the greatest final girls to ever grace the silver screen. She is strong-willed, resourceful and a true survivor. In retrospect, the character’s lack of virginal qualities, and then-progressive approach to reproductive rights, have been largely praised for avoiding the moralistic trappings that later examples of this trope so often suffer from. While Jess Bradford may have paved the way for future final girls, it is Laurie Strode from the Halloween franchise that is most widely credited with establishing the rules that would go on to make this trope so identifiable. All around her, Laurie’s sexually active peers are cut down by the knife-wielding Michael Myers, but our heroine, who just so happens to be a virgin, makes it out alive. Of course, it’s not just her chastity that saves her. She also fights back. In just the first film, Laurie displays agency by stabbing Michael - with knitting needles, a coat hanger and finally, a knife. As previously mentioned however, few final girls abide by every convention. In Laurie’s case, the deviation comes in the form of Dr. Loomis, a male figure who ultimately saves her from the force of evil. In practice however, this trope is so pervasive and versatile that it easily extends beyond slasher films. The sci-fi horror classic Alien features another iconic final girl - Ellen Ripley. In an interesting twist, Ripley trades in the trademark innocence and chastity for a certain androgynous and asexual quality. Even more so than many of her final girl peers, she is composed, assertive - a survivor as a result of her own resilience and willpower. Unfortunately, the pervasiveness of this film trope is its undoing. The slasher genre has accrued more than its fair share of subpar films over the years, but with a sympathetic and well-fleshed out final girl, our ability to identify with her can often make for a nonetheless satisfying viewing experience. However, when studios churn out unoriginal slashers featuring paper thin final girls, the audience fails to connect with the character, and the film becomes functionally dead on arrival - long before the villain claims their first victim. If the final girl is uninteresting and unrelatable, then the viewing experience is reduced to an exercise in exploitation - you’re left passively watching the suffering of people you don’t care about. From the 2008 remake of Prom Night and its final girl, Donna Keppel, to Natalie Simon in Urban Legend, in recent decades, the slasher genre has developed a habit of dropping the ball in crafting final girls - focusing too much on the conventions of the trope and not enough on the characters themselves. In the years since Clover coined the term “final girl”, the trope has been the subject of much analysis and debate. Adding to this discussion are films such as “Scream” and “The Cabin in the Woods”, as both acknowledge the final girl trope by simultaneously acting as both homage and deconstruction. Sidney Prescott, the heroine of the Scream franchise, has been described as the first “post-modern final girl,” who in each film, truly develops as a character - dismantling and challenging the archetype along the way. In “Cabin in the Woods,” Dana Polk and her friends are setup within the film to live out a classic horror movie premise. Each of them are even given archetypal roles, with Dana being identified, despite her protests, as “the virgin” or... close enough to it. It’s a hilariously effective genre study, in which the final girl is explicitly allowed to survive should she be the last one standing, and of course, resourceful enough. This “meta-Slasher” not only lays out the trope for all to see, but reminds us how it can continue to be used effectively. Given that this trope is hopelessly intertwined with the slasher genre, we’re not likely to stop seeing outdated final girls any time soon. However, with a new generation of self-aware horror flicks, and filmmakers following in the footsteps of Wes Craven’s Scream franchise, films like It Follows and You’re Next prove that modern female horror heroines don’t have to conform to the traditional final girl formula - they just have to be interesting, compelling characters. So, what do you think? Should this trope be left in the classic era of Slasher Horror films, or has the greatest generation of final girls just begun? What are some of your favorite examples of the final girl trope?