2. The Final Girls

I really enjoyed The Final Girls, I just didn’t love it as much as everyone else seemed to. To get the negative out of the way: it didn’t play with slasher tropes well enough, Angela Trimbur’s character went from “kinda dumb” to “mentally challenged” in the span of two scenes and a large number of the jokes failed to stick their landing. Those quibbles aside, the film works extremely well as an emotional examination of one woman’s acceptance of her mother’s death, as opposed to a parody of slasher films. Those emotional moments between Max (Taissa Farmiga, in the first role I’ve genuinely liked her in) and Nancy/Amanda (Malin Akerman, who has flown under the radar for far too long) are what makes The Final Girls so special. Never will I listen to “Bette Davis Eyes” the same way again. With strong supporting turns from Nina Dobrev, Alia Shawkat and Alexander Ludwig, The Final Girls is a highly entertaining and moving little film.