Although the concept itself can be traced all the way to the early ‘70s (with Black Christmas and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre standing out as notable pioneers), the concept of a ‘’Final Girl’’ didn’t realistically enter the public consciousness until the back end of the twentieth century. Indeed, whilst it had existed for a long time, and had even become somewhat old hat by then, we didn’t really have a name for it prior to the 1990s.

That all changed with two watershed moments that really helped to popularise the notion. The first was Carol J. Clover’s influential work, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, in which the author not only coins the term ‘’final girl’’, but also defines its key characteristics. To condense it into the plainest possible language, the book essentially argues that slasher movies have, from the very beginning, harbored an obsession with a specific type of female lead, who use their resourcefulness and ingenuity in order to outlive the rest of the cast.

By being cautious and level-headed, these (typically youthful) heroines earn their right to face-off against the killer who has been menacing them throughout the film- be that Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers or Leatherface. More often than not, the screenplays have these women adhere to strictly conservative values as well- abstaining from things like drugs, alcohol, pre-marital sex and any other kind of promiscuous behavior – in order to justify why they get to live, whilst everyone else must die.

You can see many examples of these chaste role-models popping up on screen, from Laurie Strode in Halloween, to the saintly paragons that endure through any given Friday the 13th installment. In short, it’s a long-standing tradition in horror, one which Clover’s writing helped to illustrate to thousands of critics across the globe.

Nevertheless, it still went largely unnoticed by the average moviegoer who – let’s be honest – isn’t compelled to pour through dense academic theory to accompany their Friday night viewing. As such, the trope persisted without anyone really calling it into question. That is, at least, until the second of our ‘90s watershed moments: the release of Wes Craven’s Scream.

A game-changer in the truest sense of the word, this meta take on the slasher took gleeful joy in dismantling all the conventions that had been suffocating the genre for decades. Most of this commentary was delivered by cineliterate audience stand-in Randy Meeks, who frequently referenced other flicks, drew attention to recurrent clichés, and offered his sage advice on how to avoid contributing to the overall body count.

Given that he covers so many different rules here, it was almost inevitable that at some point Randy would get around to explaining the ‘’final girl’’ motif. And sure enough, when he does eventually broach the topic – highlighting the moral no-nos that female characters must eschew if they hope to live- it changed the way that audiences view these movies forever.

It was really the moment that the concept penetrated the cultural mainstream, as Scream repackaged Clover’s intellectual observations in a way that was fun and accessible to all. As a result, everyone quickly became familiar with the final girl template, to the point where there was pressure on filmmakers to adapt, so that they could keep pace with this newer, savvier audience.

And so we entered into an era of self-awareness, wherein horror releases would be obligated to put some kind of fresh spin on the formula, or at the very least humorously point out whenever they were indulging in a trope. This was all well and good for a time, and the cycle certainly did produce a selection of vintage classics, but after a while the novelty kind of wore off. There are only so many times you can break the 4th wall or have a character directly acknowledge that something is a bit hokey, before even that starts to feel rote.

What else were filmmakers expected to do though? Risk looking antiquated and predictable by trotting out the same old plot beats? No, that was hardly an option. Yet equally you have to wonder if there was a better way of subverting our expectations without all the sly nudging and winking to the camera.

Well, if you saw the headline of this article and have been waiting patiently for me to arrive at the bloody point, then you’ll know that at least one flick managed to overcome this hurdle: Neil Marshall’s The Descent. Indeed, this excellent creature feature was able to do something totally unexpected with the final girl archetype, by questioning the very idea that she has to be fundamentally relatable and sympathetic.

Before we go into too much detail, let’s first establish a little context. The film tells the story of a close-knit group of women who bond over their shared love of extreme sports, including base-jumping, mountaineering and river rafting. One year after a tragic accident splinters the friendship circle, they all reconvene in North America with the aim of healing old wounds and coming back together. This reunion was organised by the gang’s de facto leader, Juno (Natalie Mendoza), who has planned a spelunking expedition through an unmapped cave system (a detail that she withholds, giving everyone the impression that they’re instead visiting a mundane tourist trap).

It’s all going fairly well, until a sudden tunnel collapse leaves the adventurers stranded in a claustrophobic maze, with no clear escape route. When they discover the truth – that no one knows of their whereabouts and that rescue isn’t coming – relationships quickly begin to fracture, secrets come out and long-held grudges bubble over to the surface. Things go from bad to worse when they realise that they are not alone in this subterranean hell either, and are in fact being hunted by primordial creatures that have evolved perfectly to live in the dark. A desperate fight for survival then ensues, one which sees the friends cast aside their ethics, turn against one another, and even resort to murder to come out on top.

Right off the bat, you can tell that this all-female line-up has little in common with your average victim pool. Granted, characters like Sally Hardesty, Mari Collingwood and Alice Hardy do eventually transform into hardened bad-asses by the end of their respective journeys, but they always start out as unassuming girl-next-door types. By contrast, the leads in The Descent feel unique from minute one, because they get a kick out of putting themselves in harm’s way. Hell, our introduction sees them hurtling down a treacherous waterfall in a small rubber dinghy, laughing as they do so.

As such, they don’t come across as ordinary and meek like many of their counterparts, given that they’re voluntarily putting themselves in perilous situations. For example, when they’re heading down to the mouth of the cave near the beginning of the film, one of the group delivers a rundown of everything that could possibly go wrong: ‘’You think it’s dark when you turn off the lights? Well down there it is pitch black. You can get dehydration, disorientation, claustrophobia, panic attacks, paranoia, hallucinations [and] visual and aural deterioration.” Remember, this is supposed to be their idea of fun!

What’s more, when the action moves into the cave it truly lives up to this off-putting description, thanks to the ingenious way that Marshall shoots it. The lighting is very selective – emanating almost entirely from the character’s feeble head-torches (as opposed to a studio rig) – the framing is often obstructed by rubble – restricting your field of view- and each successive shot seems to get progressively tighter, until the camera is forced to squeeze into what little space is left. It’s a very effective style that makes you feel as though you can barely breathe, and knowing that this is just a leisure activity for the women makes them seem all the more capable.

From the off they’re performing make-shift surgery, dangling over precarious ravines, and using astonishing upper-body strength to hoist themselves up steep caverns. In this sense, they’ve already reached the tough, no-nonsense stage of the final girl trajectory before the monsters even show up. They’re more reminiscent of stunt people from Mission: Impossible than they are characters from I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Which makes for a refreshing change of pace, as every single member of the team is properly equipped to deal with the threat ahead, rather than just hanging around to be a serving in an all-you-can-eat-buffet. You’re not eagerly waiting for them to be killed off, or rolling your eyes at any stupid decisions they make, because they are handling the situation as best they can and if they can’t cut it, then the danger must be severe. It’s just far more suspenseful watching a bunch of proactive and experienced individuals, rather than an assembly of morons stumbling their way towards the grave.

However, when the beasties finally do show up, the group abandons the idea of using their skills for mutual benefit and it becomes very much a case of every-woman-for-herself. Stragglers are left behind, accusations of betrayal fly around, and let’s just say that the creatures aren’t the only ones to meet their demise at the sharp end of a pickaxe.

All of which brings us to the character of Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) who, for all intents and purposes, is our final girl. Unlike say, Ellen Ripley, who undergoes a much more positive and empowering arc, Sarah’s survival is wholly contingent on her reverting to a primitive state. Beating the feral monsters at their own game, she fashions a clubbing instrument from a discarded human bone, submerges herself in a pool of viscera to evade detection, and loses all inhibitions when fighting, biting at flesh and gouging out eyes with her bare hands.

This savage transformation makes her almost scarier than the cave-dwellers themselves, what with her blood-soaked appearance, wild hostility and predatory body language. It becomes hard to identify with someone like this who has taken leave of their humanity, which kind of goes against the whole point of the final girl to begin with. We’re meant to root for her. We’re meant to see her as an innocent that deserves to live.

However, Sarah’s track record is far from squeaky clean, especially by the end of the film when she incapacitates one of her fellow spelunkers in an act of cold-blooded self-interest. Without any hint of remorse, she wordlessly drives a pickaxe into Juno’s leg, so that she can escape while the locals chow down. It’s a very callous move, one that’s motivated by spite more than anything else (Sarah just discovered that her husband was having an affair with Juno), but our ‘’heroine’’ is never really punished for it.

In fact, the U.S cut of the movie ends with her being rewarded for these heartless actions, with the bloody distraction enabling her to break through to the surface and drive home to safety. In this version of events she’s still the final girl, insofar as she’s the only one who rose to the occasion and defeated the crawlers, but what’s unusual is that she didn’t earn that status by sticking to conventional virtues or clear-cut morality. On the contrary, it was only by adopting a brutal survival-of-the-fittest mindset that she was able to make it.

Now the original conclusion doesn’t let her off the hook in quite the same way, featuring an additional scene that reveals Sarah’s escape to be a crazed hallucination. There’s obviously an element of comeuppance to this particular ending, yet even then she doesn’t seem too devastated by her circumstances. There’s an unsettling smile on her face, as if to suggest that this is kind of where she belongs now and that she’s at peace in her new environment, having undergone a full mental breakdown (she also fantasizes about her dead daughter being down there with her). What’s more, whilst she does remain stuck in the cave, she still outlives Juno, which was her primary goal anyway. She got what she wanted, and she got it by playing dirty.

It’s this figurative ‘’descent’’ that makes the movie so unique, as it challenges the audience’s sympathies in a way that’s fresh, smart and free of irony. After all, the final girl is supposed to be inherently relatable and likeable, but Sarah possesses neither of those qualities by the time the credits roll.

You can’t exactly label her as a quintessential everywoman – because the whole friendship group is sturdier and braver than your average couch potato – nor can you call her a purely good person. Instead, she emerges as a complex and nuanced protagonist, with her own flaws and a hidden vindictive side that make her way more interesting than just another goody-two-shoes heroine.