Editorials
10 Annoying Horror Final Girls!!!
By Zena S. Dixon.
I cannot possibly be the only one who screams at screens when these typical, annoying final girls manage to survive through the chaos of violence, guts and pools of blood. Everyone knows that THE final girl doesn’t have to be that bright or appealing! All she honestly has to be is THE last one. She will run for her life while unknowingly and unintelligently sacrificing her friends and family. Anyway, on with the list of these annoying ladies.
If I was married to Wendy, I’d probably go buck bananas too. Not only is she dense, but what adds fuel to the fire is her high-pitched voice and ear ringing shrieks. I just don’t think she had a real purpose other than staring with her colossal eyes and breaking eardrums with her horrific screams.
Some say it was the hotel that made Jack nuts, I say it was Wendy.
While watching this movie I often forgot that I was watching a horror movie. I didn’t mind that the movie had an all female cast! However, there was too much crying and ridiculousness flying around. Why did Sarah get on my nerves? I felt horrible that she lost her husband and young daughter in a car accident. As the movie progressed though, I had no sympathy for her or any of the ladies, not even Juno (even though she was pretty cool).
But it was more towards the end that Sarah annoyed me. You know the part! In the American version, we think that she escapes; instead, she’s smiling in the dark, envisioning joy and what not. Yes, my hopes were up, then I was tricked and left with the credits! Boo!
I’m surprised that there’s no fourth installment to the series “I Know What You Did Last Summer And This Time I’m Going To Kill You”! Apparently, there was a 3. Why? I don’t know. That’s neither here nor there. If someone out there decides to use that title, I want my cut! This may sound extremely mean, but Jennifer Love Hewitt in her younger days always had an annoying face. Whelp, she plays an annoying character, Julie James.
In this one, she’s way too self-involved, down to the point where I wanted to rip my own eyeballs out. She paraded around the movie in her extra tight clothes, whining about how all people are wrong. I completely had it with her with that whole “What are you waiting for, huh? What are you waiting fooooor?” You probaby read that in a calm voice but no, that’s not how it went. She screams in a harsh tone “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, HUH?! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOOOOOOR?!” I guess that was supposed to be a cool line. Someone kill her, PLEASE! Oh yeah, her boyfriend, Ray (Freddy Prince, Jr.), was just as annoying. But that’s just a side note.
Just like the original, it’s a documentary style movie that follows a reporter named Angela (Jennifer Carpenter). The reporter and her camera man shadow firemen for a night, following them into a building where they become quarantined with a rabid like zombie virus. Jennifer Carpenter’s irritating laugh and excessive breathing… jeez.
She was the last survivor, though I wish she was the first one to get eaten alive beyond recognition.
A horror movie where it’s okay to break the “No sex” rule! In this one, there is a serial killer in a small Virginian town targeting virgin teenage girls. Brittany Murphy plays Jody, a high school student with an awful hairstyle. You guessed it. She’s a virgin and her Dad is the sheriff. No doubt that Brittany Murphy was an amazing actress, however, she was not believable in this role for me. It seemed like she was supposed to portray a “good girl.” Instead, she was sultry and seemed way too promiscuous. Yep, that’s my complaint, guys! I’m a female…let me live!
May Brittany Murphy rest in peace!
I know of a lot of people disliked this movie, perhaps even hated it. I honestly didn’t mind it! Yeah, it wasn’t really a remake. It only shares the name with the 1980’s Prom Night. Plus…when I watch a slasher, I expect to see blood, guts and gore. With this movie, I felt like I was watching a Lifetime flick. But let’s put that aside for now!
In this movie, Brittany Snow SUCKED. There I said it! She’s not memorable. And on top of that, she cries 99.9% of the movie… I’m exhausted just thinking about her! But maybe it’s not her fault? Maybe she had to play a lame character in a movie that lacked blood.
Nothing like a college setting slasher flick!
Am I the only one who felt that Natalie should have been the side character? Natalie is unfortunately the heroine in this one, but to me, she was just plain ol’ boring, whiny and just insanely annoying! Why was Alicia Witt casted as this main character? She should have been the side, side character.
Silent House might not be the scariest movie, but Elizabeth Olsen is annoying. That didn’t make any sense, but oh well! Anyhow, she plays Sarah, a way over the top, college dropout whose helping her dad and uncle clean out their old family lake house. She hears some eerie sounds. From then on, she’s having a screaming contest with herself. Ugh….she screams, cries, screams some more, whimpers, and to top it off, there’s snot and all kinds of her liquids everywhere!
She’s a great actress, but in this role I couldn’t sympathize with her character because she hurt my eardrums.
Usually there is at least ONE, MAYBE two characters that I have sympathy for. But I wanted everyone to die in this movie, especially Monica Keen’s character Lori. Honestly, she deserved a horrible death. I just didn’t buy into her acting and was quickly aggravated with her whining. Everything she did was over the top and draining to my soul.
All in all, because of Lori, I’d never name any of my future children or future pets Lori. THANKS LORI!
I’m honestly surprised that this movie hasn’t been banned yet. Look, for all who’ve seen this movie, I know you feel my pain! Rooney Mara played Nancy, except she’s nothing like Heather Langenkramp! She’s weak, lacks a personality, and is a complete drag. I could care less if Rooney Mara was nominated for awards, she even won some! But you know what? She wasn’t nominated for an award for this movie.
Maybe I should blame the script writer…then again, Rooney Mara is the actress, so it’s her responsibility to ACT!
Point of this list? Yeah….these girls made it to the end, but perhaps they should have got their eyeballs ripped out 10 minutes into the movie. Maybe I’m just a hot head! Anyway, who would be on your Top 10 list?
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
Looking for New Episodes of “Chucky” on Peacock? Here’s What Changed
‘Mountain Man’ – Joe Manganiello Will Battle Zombies in Upcoming Horror Movie
‘The Blair Witch Project’ – Original Stars Release a Statement Asking Lionsgate for Residuals & Recognition
‘Trap’ – Official Trailer Previews a Wild New Horror Experience from M. Night Shyamalan
‘Longlegs’ – New Teaser Video for NEON Horror Movie Is Soaked in Cryptic Eeriness
You must be logged in to post a comment.