The final girl is ubiquitous in horror, usually slashers, and is a common trope that refers to the last female character left alive to face and defeat the killer. The term was initially coined by film studies professor and critic Carol J. Clover, who in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, noticed that these surviving female characters shared similar characteristics – they were all virginal or sexually unavailable, and avoided the vices (like drug use) that would typically lead to distraction and subsequent death for other characters.

The final girl would exhibit traits like vigilance and intelligence, and would ultimately wield a weapon like a knife or chainsaw to defeat the killer. But horror is a genre that’s always evolving, and the old definition of the final girl trope is growing further removed from its origin. Audiences are smarter than they’ve ever been, and the common tropes are being tested and altered as a result.

So, too, is the final girl. These final girls changed the formula, shattering the preconceived notion of what it means to survive a horror film.

---

Sidney Prescott – Scream

Wes Craven’s Scream reinvigorated the slasher with its sly subversion and deconstruction of tropes, which naturally made for a final girl that broke the mold. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) begins the movie as a typical, virginal good girl ripe for final girl status, though her choice to abstain from sex stems from her mother’s promiscuous reputation prior to her murder. Sidney proved to be a fighter from her first encounter with Ghostface, only growing tougher every time, but the biggest update to this modern take on the final girl? She finally gives in to her boyfriend’s desire for a more rated-R relationship. Just before he reveals himself to be one of the killers, that is. Up to this point, genre rules dictated that Sidney having sex meant she wouldn’t survive to the end credits. Not this final girl.

---

Taylor Gentry – Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Scott Glosserman’s mockumentary style take on the slasher also lovingly poked fun at the familiar clichés and tropes of the subgenre. Budding serial killer Leslie Vernon allows journalist Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals) and her two cameramen to accompany him on his rise to slasher infamy, walking them through the entire planning stage and the fateful night of slaughter. This includes the selection and subsequent stalking of his chosen final girl Kelly, who he intends to have an epic battle for survival with after dispatching her friends. Except, Kelly is eventually revealed to contain zero final girl qualities. It’s a bait and switch. Kelly was never the intended final girl – the virginal Taylor was always Leslie’s chosen survivor. Leslie had been grooming her for their showdown the entire movie, but she (nor we) just didn’t know it yet.

---

Arkin – The Collector

This one is so obvious that it doesn’t need any explaining; this final girl is a final guy. Unheard of in the realm of slashers, which is precisely why it’s a complete deviation of the archetype. Even if Arkin (Josh Stewart) had been cast as female, the very reason Arkin gets caught in the Collector’s brutal crosshairs is atypical of the tried and true final girl persona; Arkin is an ex-con plotting a heist at his rich employer’s home so he can pay off his ex-wife. It just so happens that the Collector also targeted the same family, rigging their home with deadly traps. Of course, everything about this horror film is atypical and a little harder to categorize, as it was once shopped as a Saw sequel.

---

Erin – You’re Next

What’s set up to be a normal home invasion horror film becomes anything but thanks to director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett’s sharp sense of humor. For the three animal-masked assailants who’ve come to slaughter the Davison family, they soon find themselves the victims thanks to final girl Erin (Sharni Vinson). She had a rather unusual upbringing in a survivalist compound, which made her a worthy opponent in combat, building traps, and remaining cool and levelheaded in extreme situations. In other words, this is one final girl no masked killer would want to have in their movie.

---

Max Cartwright – The Final Girls

Being the daughter of a famous scream queen, Max (Taissa Farmiga) is familiar with the slasher formula. On the anniversary of her mother’s death, Max is convinced by friends to attend a special screening of her mother’s most famous slasher movies, Camp Bloodbath.  But when the group gets sucked into the film due to a theater fire, Max and her friends find that their presence alters the fate of the film’s characters, including that of the film’s final girl, Paula. The more Max and her friends attempt to save everyone using their working knowledge of the films, the more the definition of what exactly a final girl is supposed to be become blurred. That Max has an emotional attachment to one of Camp Bloodbath’s doomed characters complicates things even more.

---

Maddie – Hush

Like most heroines, Maddie (Kate Siegel) proves herself to be a resourceful fighter when a masked killer shows up to her isolated home in the woods. What sets her apart isn’t so much that she’s deaf and mute, but that she’s given full agency of her story from the get-go. She’s a fully independent novelist with close relationships with her sister and friendly neighbors. Her career plays a major factor into her decision-making when the tense cat and mouse chase ensues. All of this to say that when most final girls are defined by their crisis, finding inner strength they didn’t know they had to defeat their masked assailants, Maddie had it all along. No stranger to adversity, this is just one more obstacle for her to get past. Albeit one deadly obstacle.

---

Mia – Evil Dead

A flawed character deep in the throes of drug addiction isn’t usually a candidate for final girl status. Neither is one that’s the first to fall victim to possession once incantations from a certain book of the dead are read aloud. But that’s precisely what Mia (Jane Levy) becomes by movie’s end. Granted her brother David did cleanse her of the demon inhabiting her body, giving her the assistance that she needed to propel her into the final battle with the Abomination. But she also was the first to notice something was very wrong with that cabin, and she never actually killed anyone while possessed. Mia’s battle with her inner demons is a metaphor for drug addiction made literal, with her finally learning to stand on her own by the time the blood-soaked showdown comes around. Because of this, her journey to final girl resembles nothing that came before.

---

Sadie and McKayla – Tragedy Girls

High school seniors Sadie (Brianna Hildebrand) and McKayla (Alexandra Shipp) are lifelong best friends with a sweet demeanor and driving need for more social media followers. They’re highly intelligent, too, especially compared to lumbering serial killer Lowell Orson Lehmann on the loose. When the body count starts piling up around them, you can count on Sadie and McKayla to outlast them all, and with style. What sets these two apart from most heroines in slashers, though, is that they’re only final girls on the surface. Beneath they’re actually conniving killers masterminding Lowell’s, and their own, killing spree for the sake of achieving fame. Sadie and McKayla are both final girls and killer, rolled into one bright bubbly package.

---

Tree Gelbman – Happy Death Day

Tree Gelman (Jessica Rothe) begins Happy Death Day as a ruthless sorority sister with a long list of enemies, making it difficult to assess just which one slipped past their breaking point to murder her. She’s the precise type of mean girl that’s guaranteed to die horribly in a slasher film, and she does, over and over again as her birthday resets with each death. As her own death count rises, she learns from them. Motivated by solving the mystery behind her killer, Tree evolves into a final girl worth rooting for. It removes the clearly defined boundaries between slasher archetypes, giving us something completely new and complex in Tree.

---

Laurie Strode – Halloween (2018)

Fitting that the very heroine that inspired the final girl trope would turn it on its head 40 years later. Ignoring all other sequels, Halloween fills in the gap of what happens after the final girl has survived her harrowing encounter. In the case of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), it’s been decades of struggling to cope with the trauma of that fateful Halloween night, which in turn instigated decades of survival prepping for one more encounter with Michael Myers. When most final girls pick up knives, machetes, or chainsaws to use against their killer, this version of Laurie relies on guns. In another reversal, it becomes clear that while Laurie spent 40 years thinking about her attacker, her attacker hadn’t thought about her at all. Laurie Strode’s first battle with Michael Myers inspired a wave of copycats. Her second evolved the idea of what it means to be the one left standing, and its aftermath.