The final girl is a character theory used in thriller and horror films (particularly slasher films) that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confron the killer, often the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in dozons of films, including Halloween and its remake, A Nightmare on Elm Street and its remake, The Texas Chainsaw Masacre and its remake, The Grudge and Wrong Turn.
There are also examples of final girls are in other genres as well. In her book Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horro Film, Clover has suggested that in these films the audience begins by sharing the persective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.
A common plot line in many horror films, particularly prior to the 1990s, is one in which a series of victims is killed one by one by a killer amid increasing terror, culminating in a climax in which the last surviving member of the group, a girl or woman, either vanquishes the killer or gets away.
According to Clover, the final girl in many of these works shares common characteristics: she is typically sexually unavailable or virginal, avoiding the vices of the victims (sex, illegal drug use, hedonistic lifestyle, etc.). She sometimes has a unisex name (e.g., Teddy, Billie, Georgie, Sidney). Occasionally the final girl will have a shared history with the killer. For example, in Halloween II, Michael Myers is revealed to be the brother of Laurie Strode and in Scream 3 the killer is revealed to be Roman Bridger, half-brother of sole survivor Sidney Prescott. The final girl is the "investigating consciousness" of the film, moving the narrative forward and as such, she exhibits intelligence, curiosity, and vigilance.
During the final girl’s confrontation with the killer, Clover argues, she becomes masculinized through "phallic appropriation" by taking up a weapon, such as a knife or chainsaw, against the killer. Conversely, Clover points out that the villain of slasher films is often a male whose masculinity, and sexuality more generally, are in crisis. An example would be Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
The phenomenon of the male audience having to identify with a young female character in an ostensibly male-oriented genre, usually associated with sadistic voyeurism, raises interesting questions about the nature of slasher films and their relationship with feminism. Clover argues that for a film to be successful, although the Final Girl is masculinized, it is necessary for this surviving character to be female, because she must experience abject terror, and many viewers would reject a film that showed abject terror on the part of a male. The terror has a purpose, in that the female is 'purged' if she survives, of undesirable characteristics, such as relentless pursuit of pleasure in her own right. An interesting feature of the genre is the 'punishment' of beauty and sexual availability, sometimes expressed as "Sex = Death".
Our film goes against this theory as the last girl alive is the meanest and most sexually available, however like the thoery says one girl survives, not because she becomes masculinized and fights off the killer but because the killer leaves her to die and she gathers her strength rips out the knife that would potentially kill her and goes off into the night, so after her confrontation she becomes masculinized.
