At first I thought I might not be able to do this, because my choices wouldn’t be interesting enough, but then I still made the list and turns out that while some are pretty predictable, I did come up with some from the left field as well.
Okay, so, a final girl… what is that anyhow? Starting with the early slashers (Black Christmas, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween), the last person to survive and often beat the bad guy, was a young woman. Often a virgin, a good girl, someone who doesn’t deserve to die in the fucked up worldview of the movie. They may suffer at the hands of the monster (or whoever), but they do find a way to survive.
Is this sexist or misogynist? Yes, kind of. It’s more like that the other girls, who need to die for this to happen, are being sexisted against. (Wow, the spellchecker doesn’t even recognize the world ‘sexisted’.) I think the character of the final girl herself is fine, especially as there have been so many subversions of it.
I do have to add that I have never seen the original Black Christmas (I have seen two of the remakes), nor have I seen Silent Night, Deadly Night. Sure, these are big omissions, but I can’t see everything.
Spoilers. Obviously. In no particular order.
Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) from Alien
Who’s going to argue with this?
They actually hide it pretty well in the first movie. Of course, now everyone knows she’s the hero, but it kind of appears she’s just the mandatory woman in the movie for a large chunk of the movie. Of course, both the character and the actor have since become iconic.
Sarah Carter (Shauna Macdonald) from The Descent
This is more complicated. Is she the final girl? Sure, she is the last one alive, but it’s never made clear if she actually survives and the movie strongly hints she doesn’t. Also, it’s not so much the strength of the character as it’s the strength of the movie, although these movies often do work better when the characters are pretty normal.
Grace (technically Grace Le Domas, but I assume she wasn’t planning on keeping that name) (Samara Weaving) from Ready or Not
Is she a final girl? Hear me out: Besides the (classist) deaths of the maids, there’s also the whole history of other women and men who have died in this way. So, while she might be the only victim in this specific story, she is still a final girl. Also, there’s a murder in the prologue.
This might actually be my favorite movie on the list and I like Samara Weaving very much. She just has a good presence.
Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) from Scream
She is actually the target here. There’s a convoluted reason why the killer wants to get rid of her and he manipulates the situation so that her death would follow the rules, including having sex with her so that she would lose the protection of virginity. Yes, she perseveres.
Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) from X
As they are making a porn film and she has already done scenes for that, she definitely isn’t virginal. Also, she’s fighting elderly people, so they aren’t much of a threat, even if they did manage to kill five people.
Erin Harson (Sharni Vinson) from You’re Next
Erin just wants to belong. Her family history is not the greatest, so she wants to get to know the family of her boyfriend, so she helps out with the dishes and whatnot. Then, when shit hits the fan, she isn’t your usual final girl who needs to grow into the role, but instead she is ready immediately. When the house is attacked, she is very quick to get into action, because she was trained for this from early childhood.
Dana Polk (Kristen Connolly) from Cabin in the Woods
The final girl chooses to let the world die in order to save herself.
Of course, this whole movie is about tropes. Dana is forced into the final girl role against her true nature, as she is kind of promiscuous. She just looks more like a final girl, so she gets chosen to be that instead of the other options.
Mia Allen (Jane Levy) from Evil Dead (2013)
I think this is an underappreciated movie. One of those remakes that would have fared better if they had been called something else, so they wouldn’t have to be compared to the original.
So, the reason the gang is in the cabin is that Mia is an addict and this whole thing is an intervention. In the end, her addiction is what saves her… in a weird way, because you need to die to get rid of the possession.
Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) from Better Watch Out
Kind of a different movie… A christmas movie where Ashley is the babysitter and the kid, who she is babysitting, is the killer.
Max Cartwright (Taissa Farmiga) from The Final Girls
Again, a different take on the trope. She specifically doesn’t want to be the final girl, because she wants to save her mom.
Okay, so this is a bit more complicated. A group of students get stuck in an old slasher movie which starred Max’s mother who is dead in real life, so she wants to save her mother. Her mother makes a different decision upon learning of their (future) relationship.