Editorials
Is It Time to Kill the Final Girl?
Is it time to kill the Final Girl?
In a recent discussion for Interview, horror icons Samara Weaving and Sarah Michelle Gellar debated this well-loved character trope while promoting the release of their upcoming film Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. After decades of starring in genre films and TV, Gellar explains her frustration with the moniker, wondering, “I almost feel like it needs to be rebranded because Final Girl makes other women seem unsuccessful.” Weaving replies, “At least [call us] final woman, we’re not young [Laughs],” before musing, “It is quite dismissive, isn’t it?”
As a lifelong fan of Final Girls, I will admit to being somewhat taken aback by this frank exchange. It’s not an exaggeration to say that my life was changed when I first met Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) in Wes Craven’s meta-slasher masterpiece Scream. I’ve been obsessed with Final Girls ever since, finding strength in their onscreen empowerment and resilience as I’ve matured alongside the evolving archetype.
But could these two titans of feminist horror be correct? Considering their combined experience, Gellar and Weaving undoubtedly have a unique perspective on the topic. After decades of watching our favorite Final Girls survive a wide array of slasher killers, is it time to finally let her die?
Who Is the Final Girl?
Halloween (1978)
The term Final Girl was codified in Carol J. Clover’s 1987 essay “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film” (later published in her seminal book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film). She introduces us to the paradigm by describing the character as “the one who does not die.” Clover follows this oversimplified definition with a detailed analysis of slasher theory while situating the Final Girl in the well-loved subgenre. “She is the one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of her preceding horror and of her own peril; who is chased, cornered, wounded; whom we see scream, stagger, fall, rise, and scream again. She is abject terror personified.”
For the next thirty pages, Clover continues to expand on this theory, placing the Final Girl in direct opposition to the Slasher Killer. We’re usually introduced to this formidable antagonist through first-person point of view sequences as he watches our heroine from afar. Young and usually naive, she will slowly find strength by taking it from her predator.
Clover bases much of her theory on Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), the teen protagonist of John Carpenter’s genre-defining Halloween (originally titled The Babysitter Murders). In addition to prototypical examples like Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and Marion Crane (Janet Leigh, Psycho) — ironically played by Curtis’ mother — Clover includes a multitude of heroines from the ’80s heyday of slasher film. Though she notes the trope’s absence of sexual transgression, Clover reminds us of the Final Girl’s defining attribute: she survives as a relatable heroine, becoming a proxy for the audience’s emotional journey.
The Weapons of Empowerment
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
As the story barrels toward a final showdown, the Final Girl grows increasingly paranoid, aware that someone is watching her. After discovering the bodies of her slaughtered friends, she must find a way to survive on her own, coming face to face with the slasher villain, a monstrous symbol of masculinity. Clover explains, “the killer is with few exceptions recognizably human and distinctly male; his fury is unmistakably sexual in both roots and expression; his victims are mostly women.”
While many female characters fall to his invariably phallic weapon — a knife, machete, drill, or chainsaw — he is bested by the Final Girl, whose empowerment defangs his patriarchal authority. For example, Michael Myers (Nick Castle) is credited in Carpenter’s original Halloween as simply the Shape, a blank-faced spectre of a violent man.
Each element of the slasher formula serves this inspiring characterization, from a growing paranoia to the killer’s masculine appearance. By the time we reach the blood-soaked finale, we have fully switched our point of view and now align with the vulnerable young woman we’ve been symbolically stalking through the killer’s eyes. Clover describes the Final Girl’s unique empowerment as she picks up his phallic weapon (or an approximation thereof) to finally wield it for herself. Vanita ‘Stretch’ Brock (Caroline Williams) concludes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 by waving a chainsaw over the decimated Sawyer family while Laurie stabs Michael with her own makeshift blades: knitting needles and a straightened coat hanger.
Dropping the Knife
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Moments after this triumph, the Final Girl often relinquishes the adopted weapon, reverting to her feminized self. This transition is known in horror academia as “dropping the knife,” a symbolic return to societal order. Many critics take issue with this startling move, balking at what could be read as an intentional abdication of power or a conflation of weakness and femininity. But I’ve always found strength in the Final Girl’s stark display of vulnerability as she buckles under the weight of unthinkable trauma. I tend to agree with Clover that dropping the knife does not imply a loss of strength, but shows that “gender is less a wall than a permeable membrane.”
In fact, the Final Girl rises alongside her killer, proving that even a vulnerable teenage girl can withstand an overwhelming patriarchal force. Heather Langenkamp, who stars as iconic Final Girl Nancy Thompson in Craven’s 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, has repeatedly discussed interactions with fans in which they thank her for modeling empowerment.
They invariably note the moment when she turns to face the monstrous Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) to bravely say, “I take back every bit of energy I gave you” before defiantly sending him back to the dream world. In an interview with Bloody Disgusting to celebrate the film’s 40th anniversary 4K release, Langenkamp describes Nancy’s legacy: “She’s really become a touchstone for so many people — not only women, but men too, for her strength and her intense character.”
The Final Girl Evolves
In the decades since Laurie and Nancy first graced our screens, the Final Girl continues to change with the evolving slashers she occupies. Scream (1996) serves as a deconstruction of the formula Craven himself helped establish as Sidney takes charge of her own narrative. In addition to reclaiming the Final Girl’s sexual liberation, she not only defeats two maniacal killers, but shuts down Ghostface’s attempt at a supernatural rise with her definitive, “not in my movie.” Sidney also does not survive alone but alongside franchise stalwart Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), a flawed yet intensely relatable character who shatters Clover’s archetypal description.
We’ve seen our share of Final Boys, most notably Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) in Jack Sholder’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge and Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) in James Wong’s Final Destination. Of course, there’ve been countless subversions of the formula itself from Urban Legend to The Descent, which both remix standard slasher mechanics while spiraling into exciting new fields.
Director Scott Glosserman would further explore the parameters of the archetype in his 2006 cult classic Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. This meta-slasher and faux documentary takes us behind the scenes with Leslie (Nathan Baesel), a self-styled murderer planning his upcoming killing spree. In-world director Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals) and her crew follow the would-be villain through meticulous preparation, capturing detailed explanations of slasher tropes, from the importance of crafting an iconic mask to his painstaking search for a “survivor girl.”
But this scrupulous honesty hides a shocking bait and switch revealed when his ostensibly virginal victim is caught enjoying raucous sex. We realize that Taylor has been Leslie’s target all along, the character with whom we’ve grown to identify. Recent news of a long-awaited sequel brings the promise of further genre exploration, perhaps featuring the trope’s most recent iteration.
The Legacy Final Girl
Halloween (2018)
This unique concept arguably originated with Steve Miner’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, which catches up with Laurie Strode (Curtis) on the 20th anniversary of the Shape’s first attack. However, the trend would reach ubiquity two decades later in David Gordon Green’s alternative sequel Halloween (2018) and its subsequent chapters, Halloween Kills (2021) and Halloween Ends (2022). Eschewing all but Carpenter’s original 1978 film, Green’s trilogy reunites us with Laurie (also Curtis) as a hardened and solitary grandmother living on a survivalist compound. Now practiced in the art of mortal combat, she’s spent the last four decades obsessed with the monster who derailed her life and patiently waiting for his return.
In the wake of Green’s success, other reboot/sequels have seen similar reimaginings of classic Final Girls like Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) in Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) and Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) in I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025). While the results vary in quality and success, each legacy sequel or slasher explores the long-term effects of trauma on our beloved characters who still wrestle with memories of their original attacks.
Now forced to confront her darkest fear, the Legacy Final Girl must once again defend herself while imparting wisdom to a younger version who will carry the torch for the next generation. In fact, Green’s Halloween concludes with Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) gripping a knife as she’s rushed to the hospital, intentionally upending decades of “drop the knife” fare.
More Than Mere Survivors
Midsommar
Perhaps because of this new iteration, interest in the Final Girl has skyrocketed, with many new fans confusing the term. I bristle at a seemingly endless series of social media posts arbitrarily naming fan favorite characters Final Girls regardless of their movie’s plot. From Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall, The Shining) and Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs) to Adelaide Wilson/Red (Lupita Nyong’o, Us) and Dani Ardor (Florence Pugh, Midsommar), all manner of female horror characters are now being classified as Final Girls, seemingly because they survive their films.
While each of the aforementioned characters is important in their own right, they are respectfully not Final Girls and serve their stories in different ways. To misuse the term Final Girl not only erases her unique contributions to the landscape of horror but also reduces a complex array of female characters to the simple dichotomy of survivor and victim.
Several years ago, another genre icon, Barbara Crampton, took issue with a similar trope in her revelatory op-ed “Don’t Call Me a Scream Queen.” Explaining her dislike for the titular term, Crampton writes, “Being a Scream Queen implies that you’re good at two things: howling at the top of your lungs and being a woman.” To extend this concept, our pop-culture understanding of the Final Girl seems to have devolved to simply: a female character who does not die.
While this does harken back to Clover’s initial definition, it negates the thirty pages of analysis that follow. These characters do more than survive while female, from their gender-coded climaxes to the trauma of a stylized killing spree. Calling all female protagonists final girls dramatically reduces the role of women in a genre that has always served as a feminist haven.
Is There a Future for Final Girls?
From L to R: Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Samara Weaving in READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME. Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
Misuse of the term seems to weave through Gellar’s conversation with Weaving and their frustration at being called a Final Girl. It must be said that neither actress is known for roles as the sole survivor of a slasher film. Gellar is perhaps best remembered for starring as a tough-as-nails warrior in the long-running series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in addition to a pair of spectacular deaths in I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2, and a starring role in the American J-Horror remake The Grudge.
Weaving has made a name for herself in a wide array of genre roles. To date, she’s played a seductive satanist (The Babysitter, The Babysitter: Killer Queen), a horror academic and early victim (Scream VI), an escaped cult sacrifice (Azrael), a nailgun-toting avenger (Mayhem), and a tortured bride (Ready or Not, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come). While some of these films may be slasher-adjacent, none of these characters are Final Girls.
Perhaps therein lies the rub. After embodying some of the genre’s most important roles, pop culture idols who inform our collective understanding of female strength, it’s understandably frustrating to have this nuance reduced to a single archetype.
But is there a future for the Final Girl?
The blockbuster success of Scream 7 — which itself introduces a younger version of the trope in Sidney’s teen daughter Tatum (Isabel May) — proves that younger audiences are hungry for new reimaginings of the slasher formula updated to reflect our changing world. And Sally, Laurie, Sidney, and Nancy continue to welcome in new waves of burgeoning horror fans who find strength in the Final Girl’s empowerment.
Perhaps the problem lies not with Final Girls themselves, but in the fallacy of lumping them together with every other surviving female character. Maybe instead of constantly trotting out this singular term, we can find more accurate ways to describe a breathtaking landscape of female characters. From mother, witch, seductress, monster, bride, warrior, crone, or queen, there’s power in acknowledging the differences in the many female characters who populate our favorite horror films.
Maybe it’s not the Final Girl who needs a rebrand, but the way we describe women in general. After all, we are more than our womanhood and the fact that we live to fight another day.
After fifty years of continuous writing, Stephen King has become a genre unto himself.
The unrivaled Master of Horror made a splash in 1974 with his debut novel Carrie and has been terrifying readers ever since. Two years later, Brian De Palma brought this shocking story to the screen with an equally electrifying horror film that remains a genre classic and a prototypical example of “Good For Her” horror. This dual debut seemed to open the floodgates, unleashing endless waves of Stephen King films.
From the highs of Misery, Cujo, and The Shawshank Redemption to the schlocky fun of Cat’s Eye, Creepshow, and Children of the Corn, the last five decades have seen just about every notable horror creator take a stab at the author’s massive collection.
In recent years, this singular subgenre has begun to burst at the seams, expanding to include Stephen King-esque fare. In 2016, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer debuted Stranger Things, a sci-fi series heavily inspired by two of King’s most famous books. The Netflix series remixes Firestarter and It by following a little girl with psychic powers and an intrepid group of kids on bikes who must battle an otherworldly foe and a sinister government agency. With its clever blend of modern effects and comforting nostalgia, this gateway horror series paved the way for Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation which remains the highest grossing horror film of all time.
Four years later, Mike Flanagan would create Midnight Mass, a spiritual adaptation of King’s second novel Salem’s Lot. Published in 1975, the book sees a tiny New England town torn apart by a centuries-old vampire. Though Flanagan’s story is perhaps more tender, both iterations of the classic horror tale follow close-knit communities shaken to their core by the presence of an ancient evil.
In addition to these recent hits, 2025 was a banner year for the Master of Horror. Audiences delighted in six mainstream adaptations, including the massively popular It: Welcome to Derry which chronicles earlier cycles of the titular clown’s reign. With this boost to King’s cultural cache, it’s no surprise that we’ve begun to see more unofficial adaptations of the author’s work and horror creators who build their own unique castles in King’s creative sandbox.
So what defines a Stephen King-esque story?
For the past fifty years, the prolific author has dipped his toes in nearly every subgenre from supernatural stories and grisly gore to western fantasy and science fiction. Including his vast catalogue of short fiction, King has tackled ghosts, demons, werewolves, zombies, aliens, mutants, and self-driving cars, not to mention bizarre monsters of his own creation. But what truly unites this vast array of horror is King’s focus on relatable characters. In his 2000 memoir/instructional text On Writing, the prolific author describes the amusement he finds in writing disparate characters, placing them in horrific scenarios, then exploring the ways they try to survive.
An unofficial Stephen King adaptation may take place in the author’s native New England — bonus points if it’s set in Maine — and reference his well-known heroes and villains. But what makes the King connection unbreakable is a character-driven story about average people who band together in the face of abject terror.
Weapons Captures Small Town Stephen King
Following his 2022 shocker Barbarian, Zach Cregger returned with Weapons, a sprawling story that begins in a doomed elementary school. On an otherwise ordinary day, Justine (Julia Garner) arrives at her desk to find that all but one of her students have disappeared. As the mystery grows increasingly violent, Justine and Archer (Josh Brolin), the father of a missing boy, find their way to the home of Alex (Cary Christopher), the class’ only surviving student. In some ways reminiscent of Salem’s Lot, Weapons swings wildly through the unfortunate town, introducing us to its flawed inhabitants as we watch their lives fall apart.
Cregger’s setup nods to a pair of King short stories. Both “Suffer the Little Children” and “Here There Be Tygers” tackle monstrous presences in elementary schools, but as Weapons reaches its final act, Constant Readers may remember another Stephen King tale. Featured in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, “Gramma” introduces us to George, a little boy tormented by an aging witch. On an afternoon alone with his sickly grandmother, the frightened child gradually realizes that the imposing old woman has been waiting for an opportunity to cast a spell that will extend her own life by possessing his body.
Alex finds himself similarly tortured by his aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), a garish witch who orchestrates a desperate plot to sustain her own strength. Transforming humans into mindless weapons, Gladys has taken over Alex’s family home and lured his classmates to the basement. Holding them in a comatose state, she syphons off their energy to extend her own supernatural life.
Vastly different in many ways, both “Gramma” and Weapons hinge on a sinister witch who uses horrific magical spells to sacrifice the bodies of her vulnerable prey.
Hokum Echoes The Shining and 1408
It’s nearly impossible to watch a film about a haunted hotel without thinking of King’s third novel, The Shining. This icy story follows Jack Torrance, an angry writer struggling with his sobriety and a shameful incident haunting his past. Accompanied by his wife and young son, Jack has taken a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook, a haunted hotel situated high in the Rocky Mountains. Snowed in, Jack finds himself tormented by dangerous ghosts who amplify his greatest fears.
Damian McCarthy’s Hokum follows a similarly troubled figure. Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a surly writer who travels to the Bilberry Woods Hotel in rural Ireland to spread his parents’ ashes. Haunted by his own tragic past, Ohm finds himself trapped in the honeymoon suite, a decaying room that’s been permanently closed to protect visitors from a dangerous witch trapped within its walls. Visual nods to King’s text abound with woodcut figurines and an animated clock, mirroring ominous descriptions found in King’s text.
Another terrifying sequence sees Ohm staring with horror at a closed door, the only thing separating him from the approaching witch. As the door knob slowly turns, Constant Readers remember Jack’s narrow escape from the ghostly woman in room 217. And Ohm’s popular Conquistador books directly reference King’s long-running fantasy series The Dark Tower which follows a gunslinger named Roland Deschain tasked with protecting the nexus of the universe.
In addition to these thematic comparisons, Hokum bears striking resemblance to King’s terrifying short story “1408.” Collected in 2002’s Everything’s Eventual, the terrifying story follows Mike Enslin, a dejected writer who’s risen to fame penning essays about his adventures in haunted locations. Mike arrives at the Hotel Dolphin and bullies his way into the titular room, despite the manager’s dire warnings. McCarthy nods to this story with an ominously misplaced hotel room door, reminiscent of King’s entry to 1408, an unsuspecting portal that appears to move each time Mike looks away.
However, McCarthy’s most direct reference lies in a minicorder Ohm uses to capture notes. Trapped inside the dreaded honeymoon suite, this device offers well-timed messages while sitting next to a decomposing corpse. Mike records his time in 1408 with his own trusty minicorder. Described for the reader, his tape has captured the man’s slow descent into madness as the room prepares to swallow him whole. With conclusions that differ wildly in tone, both Ohm and Mike find their lives irrevocably changed by encounters with the supernatural realm.
Widow’s Bay Builds Its Own Version of Castle Rock
Katie Dippold’s Widow’s Bay has taken the idea of an unofficial King adaptation and turned it into an art form. The Apple TV series sees the residents of the titular island plagued by a curse that dates back centuries. Not only does the picturesque hamlet not accommodate wifi connections, those born on the island face certain death should they ever try to leave. Desperate to modernize the tiny town, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) draws in waves of tourists just as a new cycle of terror begins.
Blending horror with deft comedy, Dippold makes cheeky references to King’s body of work. Tom warns that, “there’s something in the fog,” reminding readers of King’s 1980 novella The Mist. And Loftis’ own stay in the town’s haunted hotel sees him tormented by the ghost of a murderous clown. We even spy a vintage King hardback peeking out of a local book trade box.
In many ways Widow’s Bay feels like a new iteration of the author’s Little Tall Island, a tiny village off the coast of Maine. In addition to the 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne and a handful of harrowing short stories, this quaint fishing village is also the setting for King’s 1999 teleplay Storm of the Century. Premiering on ABC primetime, this tragic tale follows a terrified group of islanders who batten down the hatches for a dangerous Nor’easter only to find a more sinister threat lurking within.
Constant Readers may also be reminded of Castle Rock, the author’s favorite fictional town.
First introduced in the 1981 novel Cujo, the charming village becomes the star of Needful Things, King’s satire about consumerism. After several Castle Rock stories, we’re reintroduced to its residents as they gossip about the arrival of Leland Gaunt and the grand opening of his curio shop. Anything their hearts desire can be found in his varied inventory, so long as they’re willing to pay the price. Pitting cantankerous neighbors against each other, Gaunt ignites a wave of grisly violence by exploiting long-held resentments and feuds.
The town’s only defense against this supernatural threat is beleaguered sheriff Alan Pangborn. Still grieving the deaths of his wife and younger son, Alan struggles to connect with his older child and pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Also a widower, Loftis struggles to raise his own restless son and explain the strange details of his wife’s tragic death. Attempting to unravel the island’s dark secrets, Tom is aided by quirky residents including a surly fisherman named Wyck (Stephen Root) and Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), an earnest Town Hall employee. King’s own novels feature many of these proactive alliances with disparate characters combining their strengths to overcome insurmountable odds.
With Widow’s Bay renewed for a second season and Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series on the horizon, the future seems bright for new King adaptations, both spiritual and directly pulled from his catalogue. The prolific author also shows no signs of slowing down with two publications nearing release. His upcoming novel, Other Worlds Than These, is the long-awaited third Talisman book which teases direct ties to his Dark Tower world. Holly Forever will be a new installment of his crime series, offering a different kind of genre fare.
This embarrassment of riches spawning multiple worlds seems ripe for spiritual adaptation and will likely inspire horror creators for decades to come.
Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root and Matthew Rhys in “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
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