The Final Girl Phenomenon

One of the tropes the horror genre is most famous for is that of the final girl. While there is still some debate about exactly what this trope means, there can be no argument about its basic element. The final girl is the last survivor of the horror, the one who evades and possibly vanquishes the killer at the end of the story. She is also likely to appear in multiple sequels when the killer inevitably resurfaces, and may once again be the only force that stands between the other characters and certain death, though she may not always retain her final girl status, depending on the circumstances.

The final girl became popular during the 1970s and 1980s, when the trope was associated with some very specific traits. At this time, the final girl had to be morally superior to survive. This meant that she abstained from sex, and also didn’t use drugs or alcohol. The final girl was also usually shown in a position of responsibility. While everyone else was out partying, she was babysitting or staying in to study. If she was out with friends, she was the voice of reason, immune to peer pressure and encouraging her friends to act just like she did. In recent years, however, the trope has evolved so that the final girl does not have to be the perfect model of behavior in order to make it to the end of the movie.

Some traits, however, have remained the same. Carol Clover, a film professor who invented the term for a book she wrote analyzing the trope in 1992, described the final girl as the lens through which viewers experience the story. She usually has some kind of connection to the killer. Laurie Strode from the Halloween movies, considered to be the most iconic example of a final girl, is actually related to the villain Michael Myers, though she is unaware of that initially. In Scream, Sidney Prescott knows both killers, and even slept with one because he was her boyfriend. She also learns that they were the same murderers responsible for the death of her mother one year previously. The final girl, whether because of her history or in spite of it, must also possess a drive to solve the mystery behind whatever is going on in the story, and be smart enough to deal with it when everything comes to a head.

You might be wondering, though, why it has to be a final girl. What about a final boy? Clover’s argument is that only a female works…

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