Editorials
10 Strongest Female Leads in Horror…So Far!
Horror is a great place for strong female leads. More than any other genre, it’s horror that’s had the longest running trend of the female heroine. Final girls that endure punishing trauma to dig in deep and unleash the primal ferocity that gives them the upper hand when going toe to toe with the most terrifying of foes, giving us a slew of strong, memorable characters. The latest female to enter the pantheon of strong female leads is Jen (Matilda Lutz), the sexpot mistress to rich man Richard (Kevin Janssens) in Coralie Fargeat’s audacious feature debut, Revenge.
Unlike most, Jen is imperfectly human, coming across as a flirtatious Lolita type further flawed in her awareness that she’s the other woman in an affair. Yet, Fargeat and Lutz prove there’s far more than meets the eye with Jen. When tension mounts and explodes into a catastrophic act that leaves Jen for dead, Jen transforms into death incarnate. Intense, gruesome, and extreme, Revenge flips the rape-revenge formula on its head by avoiding the fetishistic gaze and replacing it with harsh truth wrapped in carnage.
Thanks to Shudder and Neon, Revenge brings a new entry in extreme French horror and with it a heroine for the ages to theaters and VOD May 11, 2018, with Shudder then adding to their streaming service in the fall. In anticipation, we celebrate by looking back at horror’s 10 strongest female leads in horror so far:
Mia – Evil Dead
Mia began Fede Alvarez’s 2013 film as the weakest link among the group of friends at that fateful cabin; her drug addiction made her untrustworthy and unreliable. It also made her the perfect vessel to unleash Deadite chaos, leaving her locked away in the basement while chaos ensued. But it also gave her the most satisfying transformation from powerless to fighter with powerful survival instincts, ripping her own arm off in the process of taking down the Abomination and saving the world.
Sally Hardesty – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
On a road trip with friends to visit her grandfather’s grave after reports of grave robbing turns to hellish nightmare after running into the twisted family behind the film’s brutal slayings. She’d deserve praise alone for simply outlasting her friends and brother against the likes of Leatherface, but that she endures a creepy dinner party where she’s the intended meal earns her high marks. She survives being tied up, taunted, and hammer swings to her skull from grandpa only to free herself and throw herself through a second floor window out of the sheer instinct to survive. That she fights through fatigue and overwhelming fear to make it to safety against the likes of the Sawyer family is no small feat.
Erin – You’re Next
What should have been a quiet weekend away with boyfriend Crispian at his parent’s rural vacation home for a family reunion turns into terror with the arrival of three masked killers that begin to pick the family members off one by one. Yet, not long into their killing spree the killers discover they may have picked the wrong family when Erin fights back. Hard. Setting traps and utilizing every possible weapon at her disposal, Erin turns the hunters into the hunted, subverting all home invasion films before it.
Alice Johnson – A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and 5
The truth is that all of the women on Elm Street make for fierce opponents to dream killer Freddy Krueger, a precedent set in place by the resilient Nancy Thompson. While Nancy is among the strongest of female heroines, Alice Johnson edges her out for surviving multiple rounds with Krueger, the last of which while pregnant. Coming from a broken home and meek in personality, her dream master powers transformed her from shy outcast to confident fighter, making her one of the few to literally kick Krueger’s ass. When Krueger threatens the safety of her child after Krueger already ripped away her child’s father, Alice proved once again that he chose the wrong Elm Street kid to mess with.
Ginny Field – Friday the 13th Part 2
One of the series most popular final girls for a reason, Ginny Field demonstrates that often cool intelligence wins out over sheer brawn. Aspiring child psychologist turned camp assistant, Ginny displays a tough moxie from the first time we’re introduced to her. It’s furthered as she continues to survive when her fellow camp co-workers fall victim to Jason Voorhees in his first iconic appearance in the series. She’s also the first to figure out how to wield his mommy issues against him, lulling him into a calm stupor before plunging a machete through him.
Clarice Starling – The Silence of the Lambs
As an FBI agent in training, Starling is a relative newcomer still learning the ropes, which means she’s a little over her head when sent to a mental institution to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Navigating his mind games while seeking out information on active serial killer Buffalo Bill to help the FBI prevent the death of his latest victim is daunting enough. Working as a fledgling in a field where her superiors often dismiss her input doesn’t help. But Starling is not only the only one to solve the case, but face Buffalo Bill all on her own, pushing through her fear in the pitch black to save the day. She’s tough.
Laurie Strode – Halloween
Halloween night was never the same for teenager Laurie Strode, who unwittingly went to battle with Michael Myers and survived. The only responsible one among her friends, Laurie is the rare final girl that had the added weight of ensuring the two kids in her care were safe while being hunted down by the Boogeyman incarnate. That she not only succeeded, but warded off his attacks multiple times through the Doyle household made her an instant final girl for the ages.
Sarah Carter – The Descent
Before that cave spelunking adventure among friends gave way to nightmarish creatures treating them as lunch, Sarah Carter was already a strong female badass. She survived the horrific loss of her husband and daughter in a car accident. That her husband was also cheating on her with her friend Juno gave an extra layer of battle won sympathy. But it doesn’t even scrape the surface of what she endures in the depths of the cave system. She releases her inner pain on the cave-dwelling crawlers, slaughtering them in a rage of pain and anger, making them think twice about their meal plan. Sarah isn’t the most mentally sound final girl, given her past, but she’s easily among the toughest.
Sidney Prescott – Scream
It’s difficult to think of a final girl and horror heroine that’s endured as much as Sidney Prescott has. After the rape and murder of her mother, she then has to contend with being the target of the Ghostface killer at the young age of 17. That he happens to be her own boyfriend Billy Loomis and his best friend Stu only twists the knife further, as her true friends fall around her. But even after she continues to remain Ghostface’s focus, as various people pick up the mask and mantle time and time again, throughout her life well into adulthood. Through betrayals, the loss of nearly everyone around her, massive trust issues, and countless attempts on her life, she somehow comes out with her sanity intact and even stronger than before. It’s impressive.
Ellen Ripley –Alien
The high standard by which all strong female leads are measured, there’s no one else like Ellen Ripley. The warrant officer of the Nostromo is introduced as the sole voice of sound reason, not only deciphering the alien transmission as a warning rather than distress call, and refusing to let Kane back on board due to quarantine regulations. She’s ignored, resulting in catastrophic events for the crew, but her intelligence, cool demeanor under pressure, and toughness meant her survival. Against one of horror’s toughest villains, Ripley is counted on again and again in the series to save the day. That she was initially written as a man is even better; Ripley is never defined by the men around her or her relationships to them. She’s just pure Xenomorph butt-kicking badass.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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