Final Girls: A Novel

The final girl is a trope that originated in horror cinema, particularly the slasher film subgenre. The Golden Age of Slasher Films is considered to be in the 1970s and 80s. Though the popularity of the slasher film waned in the decades that followed, the final girl trope remained a prominent genre staple, evolving as horror found new incarnations on the big screen.

The final girl began as a subversion of the damsel in distress. In 1960s films, the female horror lead is usually portrayed as the antagonist’s objective target, signaling their victory if they can kill or dominate the damsel. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho saw Marion (Janet Leigh) and Lila Crane (Vera Miles) stalked by Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a quiet motel proprietor masking a dark secret. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), directed by Roman Polanski, follows a woman (Mia Farrow) who believes that a Satanic cult has forced her to become pregnant with the child of the Devil.

By 1972, the role of the female horror lead began to shift with Theodore Gershuny’s film, Silent Night, Bloody Night. The character of Diane Adams, played by Mary Woronov, is seen as an early version of the final girl since she remains the sole survivor among the film’s main characters. Two years later, the Tobe Hooper film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre cemented the fundamental concept of the final girl by introducing the character of Sally Hardesty, played by Marilyn Burns. Sally Hardesty was soon followed by others, who further defined the characteristics of the archetype. In 1978, John Carpenter’s Halloween introduced Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who resists death at the hands of The Shape, also known as Michael Myers (Nick Castle). Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) took the final girl to space through the character of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). By the 1980s, the final girl trope was best represented by the characters of Ginny Field (Amy Steel) in Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and Nancy Thompson (Heather Lagenkamp) in Wes Craven’s fantasy slasher franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Cultural critics have identified the final girl trope as a compelling topic for feminist theory in cinema. In 1987, Carol J. Clover solidified the concept of the slasher film through her essay, “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Later critics, like Tony Williams and Derek Soles, would build upon Clover’s ideas, helping readers and viewers to conceive of a final girl whose role represented female agency in a male-dominated world. Critics generally agree that the stereotypical final girl begins as a naïve, virginal character, whom the antagonist stalks last because of her sexual purity. When all of the final girl’s friends have been killed off, the final girl subverts the antagonist’s expectations by leveraging either her intelligence, her unique skills, or her primal rage to escape or kill the antagonist. The final girl then becomes forever defined by her traumatic experience.

Final Girls by Riley Sager plays with the storied history of the final girl by putting the concept at the center of the novel. In slasher films, the final girl trope is usually contextual, calling itself to mind only when the viewer is aware of its characteristics. In the novel, Sager bakes the concept into the text, allowing protagonist Quincy Carpenter to react to the notion that she has been named a Final Girl. The emotional arc of the novel sees Quincy struggling to transcend her Final Girl status while also acknowledging the ways the Final Girl label speaks to her experience.