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Amidst all the hype about Superman, it may have slipped your mind that we're just a week away from the release of I Know What You Did Last Summer. While it definitely caters to more of a niche audience and will most certainly be overshadowed at the box office, that's not to say that horror fans aren't excited about the legacy sequel, especially those that grew up in the 90s and hold the original in high regard. However, for the true fans – the ones that live and breathe the genre – some recent comments made by star Freddie Prinze Jr. made us do a bit of a double take and ask, "What the heck is he talking about?"

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly about the I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel, Prinze Jr. was asked what it was like coming back together with fellow icon Jennifer Love Hewitt after almost three decades away.

This article contains major spoilers for "Companion."

Gender-based conflict, violence, and terror are embedded into the fabric of horror. Vampires searching for brides, damsels in distress needing to be saved, "Hitchcock blondes," and masked slashers hacking up scantily clad babysitters and camp counselors are mainstays of the genre, and the overwhelming majority of horror stories are either exploiting, examining, or subverting the expectations of gender-based violence. However, as film theorist Carol J. Clover so perfectly explained in her essay "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film," when it comes to horror, "gender is less a wall than a permeable membrane."

Horror movies are rich with cross-gender identification, and it's been psychologically theorized that horror fans have a greater capacity for empathy. It's why cis men watch a film like "Aliens" and easily identify Ellen Ripley as the coolest character without ever believing she's "lesser-than" for being a woman, and...

The Final Girl is a staple of the horror genre, dating back to the '70s and '80s and featured in some of the most iconic and beloved movies in the genre. As the murderer or monster gradually picks off its victims, inevitably, one is left standing, often a woman with certain character traits, and it's up to her to take the baddie down once and for all. The term was first coined by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws, which explored the role of gender in slasher films.

When we think about iconic final girls, it’s usually Laurie Strode, Nancy Thompson, and Sidney Prescott who come to mind. These fantastic female characters have become horror movie legends, celebrated for their strength and resilience while inspiring a generation of girls to take back their power. Horror historians will also note the flawless Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) from Bob Clark’s Black Christmas while sci-fi fans will suggest Ellen Ripley. But before them all was Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns). The star and sole survivor of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre burst onto the scene in October of 1974 and forever changed the way we view women in film. On a road trip through Texas, Sally crosses paths with some of the most depraved villains in the history of horror and manages to live through a night of sheer hell. Though Hooper’s gritty masterpiece has stood the test of time,...

The Final Girl trope defined characteristics of the last character left alive to confront the killer in horror films, particularly in slasher films. The rise of feminism in the 1970s became a milestone in the genre as the damsel in distress did not need a man to rescue her anymore. Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in the Alien franchise and Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) from Black Christmas all portrayed strong female characters who all fought back against their assailant.

Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is one of the most famous final girls in the Halloween franchise that was first released in 1978 and deemed Laurie as the victim of her brother Michael Myers. As the final girl characteristics have developed, like the franchise, she no longer waits around for Michael instead is ready to fight him and is no longer a target.

Famous for its strong female leads, the Alien franchise has many final girls throughout its $1 billion franchise. As a term first coined in 1992 by Carol J Clover, a professor of American Film, final girl describes a trope of a surviving female character in horror films, especially ones who are more intelligent and often play a misfit role. The trope has been around for a long time and applies to many different characters, so it is hard to distinguish which horror movie had the first final girl, however, Alien has some of the most famous iterations of the trope.

Since the first Alien film was released in 1979, there have been seven movies in the franchise, and every Alien movie follows the trend of hosting a female lead. The so-called final girls use their ingenuity to outwit the Xenomorph in the movies, leading to their survival by the end of the film.

Major spoilers for "Strange Darling" follow.

Director J.T. Mollner's indie horror flick "Strange Darling" has finally opened in U.S. theaters with the wind of good publicity at its back. In a fascinating career pivot, "Strange Darling" was shot on 35mm film by actor Giovanni Ribisi making his debut as a cinematographer. Then, there's the promise of a twist in both the film's marketing and reviews.

"Go in blind" is easy criticism when a film anchors itself with a twist but "Strange Darling" earns that rave. The film is introduced as a story told in six chapters, but those chapters are presented out of order. Mollner banks on his audience's genre and gendered expectations as he assembles the movie's puzzle pieces together before their eyes.

So, what does "Strange Darling" appear to be about? A young woman, "The Lady," (Willa Fitzgerald) is fleeing a man, "The Demon" (Kyle Gallner...

Killer Collectibles highlights five of the most exciting new horror products announced each and every week, from toys and apparel to artwork, records, and much more.

Here are the coolest horror collectibles unveiled this week!

Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay by Jordan Peele

Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay by Jordan Peele will be published on October 11 via Inventory Press, who previously released a similar book for Get Out.

Priced at $19.95, the 208-page softcover book illustrates Peele’s script with over 150 stills from the film, deleted scenes, in-depth annotations, and an introduction by Peele.

It includes writing by Hannah Baer, Theaster Gates, Jamieson Webster, Jared Sexton, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond, and Leila Taylor, alongside excerpts from Naomi Klein, Coleson Whitehead, Maggie Nelson, Carol J. Clover, Michael Harrington, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Puppet Master: Leach Woman Figure & Toulon’s Trunk from Neca

Neca will release a Puppet Master ultimate action figure two-pack...

Women are frequently at the center of the horror genre, often being the most iconic victims and survivors of slasher killers. The term "final girl," referring to the sole female survivor of slasher films, was coined by genre scholar Carol J. Clover in her 1987 feminist exploration of horror tropes 'Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film'. Over the decades, the role of final girl has evolved and been deconstructed in an effort to remove some of the genre's more reactionary and patriarchal themes, allowing final girls to be more complex than the morally uncomplicated and virginal stereotype that defined 1980s horror heroines.

Warning: the following contains major spoilers for In a Violent Nature.

Most seasoned horror fans have seen their share of slashers. From massive franchises to indie gems, this particular brand of scary movie follows a final girl and her friends as they’re terrorized by a masked killer with an ax to grind. Arguably originating from classics like Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the sub genre was codified in Carol Clover’s “Her Body, Himself” which opens Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, an academic study of the genre. This landmark essay coined the term “final girl” while identifying four additional slasher components. Clover summarizes “the killer is the psychotic product of a sick family, but still recognizably human; the victim is a beautiful, sexually active woman; the location is not-home, at a Terrible Place; the weapon is something other than a gun...

Terrifier 2 director Damien Leone defends the graphic scenes of violence against women, stating that it is a powerful component of the slasher genre and makes the villain more reprehensible. The final girl in Terrifier 2, played by Lauren Lavera, is a formidable adversary for Art the Clown, displaying strength, protectiveness, and a refusal to back down. Terrifier 3, set to release on October 25, 2024, will continue to showcase a tough and relatable final girl, creating an underdog story that audiences love.

Terrifier creator Damien Leone has had to fend off a fair amount of criticism for the gory and harrowing crimes of his creation, Art the Clown. However, the director is clear in his goals for the most imaginative and unpredictable horror franchise of the century, and for his part is happy to defend the movies when it comes to one complaint in particular.

Terrifier 2 became a box office...

Every year, horror fans attempt the daunting task of watching a horror movie for each day in the month of October. Aptly named 31 Days of Horror, the challenge usually consists of having viewers watch a mixture of their favorite classic horror films, as well as popular genre staples and recent releases that may be new to them. In celebration of the spooky season, we at MovieWeb have assembled our own suggestions for the month, providing a plethora of favorites from our contributing editors and writers. Today, we kick off Day 19 with the 1982 remake of Cat People.

Horror and sexuality have almost always gone hand in hand as taboo topics in older times, with the former frequently being used to allegorically explore the latter. The vampire myth is the prime example of this, along with the gothic works of the Brontë sisters, the 'final girl' trope and male gaze in slasher cinema,...

The Final Girl trope has been around since the slasher films of the 1970s, with the official term being coined by Carol J. Clover in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. It has been used to describe the sole surviving female character at the end of a horror movie. The names Laurie Strode (Halloween), Nancy Thompson (A Nightmare on Elm Street), and Sidney Prescott (Scream) are all iconic to the horror genre and are just some of the many women who have either escaped from or defeated the movie's main villain. This begs the question, "what about the Final Boys?"

Although not as prevalent as Final Girl characters in horror movies, the genre has its fair share of Final Boys who have survived their own terrifying tormentors. Characters like Chris in Get Out and Casey from The Faculty were able to avoid dying at...

Horror movies, particularly slasher movies, often contain a strange paradox. They depict women as two-dimensional victims, often punished for their autonomy and enjoyment of sex. Yet, they often end with a female survivor triumphing against the monster. Author Carol J. Clover discussed the trend in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, and coined the term "final girl" to describe it.

The term stuck, and today, final girls are a recognized part of the horror movie landscape. More recent movies have explored the idea in depth, both enhancing and subverting it in the process. There have even been films dedicated solely to the idea, such as The Final Girl and Final Girls, both released in 2015. But the trope itself is more complicated.

Related: One Horror Game Deserved the Movie Treatment More Than Fnaf

The Origins of the Final Girl

The first confirmed appearance of a...

The horror trope of the "Final Girl" has been part of the cultural conversation around horror films for decades. While it wasn't officially coined until 1992 by author Carol J. Clover, the trope itself has been around much longer, stretching back into the horror films of the 1970s and '80s. For the uninitiated, the term "final girl" refers to the last woman standing at the end of a horror movie. Thanks to her logical or emotional intelligence, creativity, ability to think on her feet, or impressive physicality, the final girl is able to outlast the other poor, young victims of the film's masked slasher in order to face the villain in a final battle.

Self-consciously tacky effort recalls the classic horror films that made a spectacle of women being murdered and abused

This is frankly a shonky bit of exploitative nonsense that, in a way, recalls the classic horror films that feminist film theorist Carol J Clover wrote about so perceptively in her foundational tome Men, Women and Chainsaws. Such films – in this case, on an island where vile rich men espousing misogynist views hunt down and kill the women they’ve trafficked there – only to turn the tables in the last act when the “final girls” triumph so that female viewers might experience a cathartic thrill of vengeance.

That said, one gets the impression that the film-makers on Hunt Club, starting with screenwriters David Lipper (who has a supporting role here) and John Saunders, and director Elizabeth Blake-Thomas, aren’t taking any of this that seriously. The film seems to revel in the low-budget tackiness of it all,...

Neve Campbell (right) in Scream (Dimension Films); Mia Goth in X (A24) Graphic: AVClub If you and your buddies were being hunted down by a psychopathic serial killer, who do you think would be most likely to survive? Is it the physically imposing jock who’s always in a fight,...

The relationship between women and horror has always been a twisting, contentious one. For too long, it was assumed that women didn't like or engage with horror, and that films featuring sex, gore, and violence were outside their interests. This was convincingly disputed by Carol J. Clover in her seminal book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, who highlighted that women were, in fact, big fans of the genre. But it is only in recent years that we have seen a shift in the voices telling the stories, moving away from women filmmakers as a novelty item in the sea of male-dominated horror to better representation. From the rise of film festivals that center on women filmmakers, like the annual Final Girls Film Festival in Berlin, is clear that women are here to stay in the spooky sphere of horror. We have also seen that when women are given the opportunity to make horror,...

Acclaimed director John Carpenter reflects on the production of Halloween when looking back at his filmmaking career, opening up about his experience when making his incredibly influential 1978 slasher film. Carpenter's third feature film starred Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence. It introduced audiences to the dreaded masked serial killer Michael Myers, who stalks the streets of Haddonfield after escaping from a sanitarium on a fateful Halloween night. Halloween not only stands as one of the most successful independent films of all time thanks to its reception and box-office gross but played a significant role in reinvigorating and revolutionizing the horror genre in subsequent years.

As part of a more extensive interview with Variety discussing his filmmaking career, Carpenter was asked about his experiences developing several of his most celebrated films. When asked about the original 1978 Halloween's production, the director emphasized that the shoot remained one of his most fondly remembered filmmaking experiences from his career,...

Horror has always been a genre for women. In her seminal work "Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film," Carol J. Clover explores the female characters in horror films as well as their impact on traditionally accepted gender norms. Research from the Geena Davis Institute shows that watching strong female protagonists in horror films can help empower women in their own careers. The essay that opens Clover's book is known for coining the term "final girl," the last, usually female, protagonist left alive in a slasher film.

Another beloved genre trope is the "scream queen." An actress known for her lung capacity, the Cambridge Dictionary defines this archetype as "a female actor who plays a main character in a horror movie who gets frightened or attacked." Fay Wray is often named as the first scream queen with many noting her work in the 1933 film "King Kong,...

Spoilers for The Menu (2022).

Although The Menu reveals something surprising about its heroine mid-way through the movie, the way that this detail informs her character’s fate flies in the face of one infamous horror movie trope. Horror movies have not always been kind to female characters. While Carol Clover famously outlined the Final Girl trope in her seminal work Men, Women, and Chainsaws, female characters who failed to align with a rigid moralistic framework were often brutally killed for their sins. However, horror movies are far from inherently reactionary, and many works in the genre have subverted the idea that sexual liberation is a death sentence for female characters.

In the satirical horror comedy The Menu, Anya Taylor-Joy's character, Margot, is revealed to be an escort midway through the story. However, The Menu movie ending not only lets Margot live, but ends up inverting the sex-equals-death trope when...

Asking a filmmaker to name their favorite movie tends to be a dead-end line of inquiry. Directors don't see their films the same way we do. They can't. They spent months to a year or more piecing the work together. They've seen it in fragments, as a rough assemblage, and in various other incarnations. Some directors don't even watch their movies with an audience. They finish and move on to the next one.

Quentin Tarantino, however, is a different breed. When he's not making a movie, he's watching movies. When he's making a movie, he's watching movies. He is acutely aware of where his movies land in the continuum of film history and loves to pontificate as to how his run measures up to the oeuvres of greats like Howard Hawks and Brian De Palma. So when you ask him to name his favorite movie, you can rest assured that...

“Halloween Ends” is here.

And while the critical response has been remarkably indifferent (currently holding a cool 45 on Metacritic), it is looking like another box office juggernaut as well as a streaming powerhouse (it’s debuting simultaneously on Peacock). Plus, it’s Halloween and there’s a new “Halloween” movie – one that promises a conclusion to the trilogy that started in 2018 and, to a larger degree, the saga that began with John Carpenter’s original masterpiece in 1978. At this point, you’ve kind of got to watch it.

This time around, we have jumped ahead four years since the blood-soaked events of 2021’s “Halloween Kills”. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is living in a new home with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and trying to move on from her life, even though she’s still living in Haddonfield (was retiring in Palm Springs not an option?). Laurie is working on...

From Laurie Strode counting the days until Michael Myers returns in “Halloween” to a betrayed bride fighting off her in-laws with a shotgun in “Ready or Not,” final girls are found at the beating heart of the horror genre. In the black-and-white dichotomy of good-versus-evil, these heroes — yes, often leading ladies, but not always! — typically begin as victims in nightmarish scenarios that bloom into epic opportunities for them to best their villains and survive.

Coined and carefully considered by professor Carol J. Clover in her 1992 work “Men, Women, and Chainsaws,” the final girl trope was initially defined as the sole survivor of a slasher who confronted the antagonist in a last-act face-off and who was often ascribed some sort of moral superiority compared to other victims; virginity being the de facto example. Classic examples include Sally Hardesty in “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and Jamie Lee Curtis’ legendary babysitter from...

Evoking the idiotic but undeniably iconic image of a shrieking woman and her bouncing boobs running for their lives, the term “scream queen” has shaped horror actresses’ careers ever since Fay Wray climbed the Empire State Building with King Kong in 1933. And yet, the half-funny play on words, nebulously defined and as outdated as the surface-level conceit it describes, doesn’t mean much of anything to the modern moviegoer anymore.

Unlike the “final girl” — a phrase coined and carefully considered in Carol J. Clover’s 1992 “Men, Women, and Chainsaws,” describing the scrappy last victim in your basic slasher — scream queens still don’t have a shared definition among contemporary critics. The term has been retrofitted to acknowledge undeniable legends of the genre like Elsa Lanchester, the “Bride of Frankenstein” herself, and applied to newer genre mainstay actresses from Toni Collette to Jenna Ortega.

But outside of a string of 2015 think-pieces...

There are several popular and overused tropes in the horror genre, from jump scares, to characters who aren’t believed, to swelling music in scary moments. The most popular trend is that of the final girl. The term was invented in 1992 by author Carol J. Clover for her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. The final girl refers to a horror film where the last person standing is the usually virginal heroine with moral standards who outlasts her friends and kills the villain in the end.

While horror films have been around for several decades, the term "final girl" was coined more recently than most people may think. Originally created in 1992 by author Carol J. Clover in her book "Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film," the term refers to a common trope in horror movies in which the last female character(s) alive confront and defeat or escape the killer, essentially becoming the only people left to tell the story.  Characteristics of a final girl include a refusal to indulge in drugs, alcohol, and sex in order to survive the film. Though not always depicted as the smartest character, more...

The post The 15 best final girls in horror movies ranked appeared first on /Film.

The “final girl theory” is meant to describe the trope in horror films of one female character being the last to survive, having to defeat the killer, and live to tell the tale. While Carol J. Clover originally coined the term in her 1987 essay Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film and applied it mainly to American slasher films of the ’70s and ’80s, it’s still used in contemporary cinema in a variety of horror films to describe the surviving female character. As slasher films have seen a decline in popularity since their “golden age,” the use of the term “final girl” has expanded to include different sub-genres of horror films, as well as how the final girls themselves behave throughout the films.

The original meaning of the final girl, as described by Clover in 1987, defined the girl as the sole survivor of the group who has a final confrontation with the villain.

Lined Lips and Spiked Bats is a monthly column devoted to women in genre cinema.I love slasher films, but they don’t love me back. Being a woman who is interested in genre cinema means that she is in a constant game of negotiation with the films that she is watching. She will search for images to reclaim for herself or find the truth of a character who may only be in the film to get hacked to bits by the latest knife-wielding madman. To understand why she gravitates toward movies which often hold no respect or common decency for her gender it becomes necessary to ask the question: “How does a woman watch anything?” There’s no easy answer to that question, and filmmaking has nearly always been an industry in drought of women directors and the perspectives of women in the field of film criticism.Genre cinema...

David Crow Oct 29, 2019

We count down the 13 best ass-kicking leading ladies to survive horror movies.

The term "final girl" is now as ubiquitous in horror culture as "slasher" and "jump scare." The phrase was first coined by Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, and it refers to a heroine (or "survivor girl") who can be defined by several features: most obviously she is the last one standing after most or all of her friends have been sent to that big boiler room in the sky; she also is traditionally young, and has remained virginal and pure in the face of vice—making her far too innocent for a chainsaw’s sullying touch; and finally she must appropriate a masculine object to assert herself above the monster (i.e. pick up Jason’s machete and stab him right between the hockey pads!).

The...