The Final Girls’ meta approach to horror genre tropes is far more clever and entertaining than expected.
By Josh Lasser
As the original Scream made readily apparent years ago, there are rules to horror movies, especially ’80s slasher films.
While Scream brought a movie-like slasher to the (then) present, The Final Girls takes a somewhat different tack, sending its characters back into an ’80s slasher movie. That may sound like a recipe for disaster, but director Todd Strauss-Schulson pulls it off.
Taissa Farmiga stars as Max Cartwright, a high schooler whose mother, Amanda (Malin Akerman), was once a famous scream queen but has never managed to get past those projects, particularly one called Camp Bloodbath. Before Final Girls truly gets started, Max loses her mother in a car accident and is still coping with the loss three years later.
On the anniversary of her mother’s death, Max decides to attend a screening of Camp Bloodbath and for reasons never explained, somehow finds herself, along with friends who were also at the screening, inside the movie. Much of Final Girls takes place in this film-within-the-film.
Writers Joshua John Miller and M.A. Fortin know the tropes of slasher films and not only offer them in the film-within-the-film, which one would expect, but also in the larger movie. Consequently, Max’s companions consist of the funny friend, Gertie (Alia Shawkat); the mean girl, Vicki (Nina Dobrev); the sensitive jock, Chris (Alexander Ludwig); and the nerdy cinephile, Duncan (Thomas Middleditch).
We want to hear it.
On the other side of things is the Camp Bloodbath villain, mask-wearing, machete-wielding, Billy Murphy (Dan B. Norris). Billy had been a camper at Camp Blue Finch until some counselors played a horrible prank on him. Now, naturally, Billy seeks revenge on all the counselors at the camp, but mostly those who aren’t virgins.
Max and her friends quickly realize that whatever force put them into the movie requires that they participate in the story of the film. Although they try, they are powerless to escape the camp and the plot. There are some great moments where they attempt to figure out their duty relative to the film-within-the-film characters and soon take it as their job to try to save the counselors, most notably Nancy, the character played by Amanda, but also Tina (Angela Trimbur), Kurt (Adam DeVine), and Blake (Tory N. Thompson).
The cast is a large one, but as the characters are purposefully walking clichés, they are each well-defined and occupy an important place within the film. More than that, however, they all turn in exceptionally enjoyable performances.
The big question throughout the movie is whether or not, as the title implies, there can be final girls left alive when Billy falls, or whether there still must be, as the trope goes, only a single final girl remaining. And, if Max can save Nancy, does that mean that her mother, Amanda, will exist back in the larger world?
To offer any of those answers here would be to ruin Final Girls which really does a great job of taking the audience through a horror film, explaining some of its foolishness, and still managing to offer a few light chills. Yes, The Final Girls may lean far more towards humor than scares, but still has a couple of creepy moments.
What it also has, at times, is a lack of logic. For instance, there is more than one sequence in the film where characters from the present don’t act in their own—or the group’s—best interest, choosing instead to go down the horror movie trope route as opposed to the practical one. Whether this is because of slasher film requirements or simply a plot flaw becomes difficult to tell.
Strauss-Schulson and company aren’t just heavily invested in delving into the story tropes either, also doing a fine job with the look and feel of the entire affair. When we get to see Camp Bloodbath for the first time, it looks like we’re watching an old print of the film. Later, when Max and company get to the flashback sequence about Billy’s origin, the flashback trickles into their world. And when machete-wielding Billy is about to appear, Max and her friends, but not the counselors, can hear the musical cues.
The Final Girls, when it opens, feels like it is setting up as a disappointment, a poor excuse for horror tropes and brief nudity. It turns out to not be that at all. It is a smart, fun exercise in meta filmmaking. Throughout the movie one is fully aware that there is little originality to the concept and execution, but the fast pace, stylish shots, and great characters help The Final Girls overcome any hurdles. One can only hope that there is a sequel in the works.
