The Final Girl in Slasher Films

Brewer (2009) compared eight original horror films with their remakes to analyse female stereotypes. All of them were slasher films, i.e., a type of horror film in which a psychotic person kills many young people, usually women, using weapons such as chainsaws or blades. In most cases, the killer is an ordinary person who in the past had suffered a trauma and due to this injustice seeks vengeance. Often, filmmakers establish the so-called final girl in the beginning of the film: a tough and determined female who manages to survive in the end of the film after the "final struggle" with the killer. 

In the horror genre, the stereotypic characteristics of beauty, gentility, and morality permeate the slasher film. According to Rockoff (2002), “One of the most enduring images of the slasher film is that of the beautiful heroine screaming with fear- as the killer rapidly approaches. These post-modern damsels in distress, who have been collectively referred to as the “Final Girl,” are usually the lone survivors of the killer‟s rampage” (p. 13). In a study conducted by Sapolsky, Molitor, and Luque (2003), researchers observed the 10 most commercially successful slasher films of the 1990s. Results showed that the films portrayed female characters in more instances of fear, screaming, and cowering, than the male characters.

There are still stereotypic portrayals, however, they slightly shifted over the past decades with female roles expanding beyond their original stereotypic and limiting roles. While the original films portrayed women as helpless in fight scenes, the remakes showed them as women who were well capable of taking care of themselves and were fighting back. The original films portrayed women as unintelligent persons while they turned into intelligent problem solvers in the remakes. 

In respect to dialogue during critical thinking, the original films seemed to have either no real dialogue, or an inner dialogue. On the other hand, half of the remade films allowed the female characters to have very strong dialogue. 

In both films original and remake, women were victimised. In the remakes, however, the final girl often turned into the hero. Another difference observed in the analysis is sexual morality. In the past, those surviving in the end tended to be the virginal girls while the promiscuous ones died. This is a stereotype that still exists but results show that it is not as prevalent today in the remakes is it used to be in the original films. When Cowan and O'Brien (1990) conducte a study coding 56 slasher films and focusing on the violence directed towards men and women, they came to the conclusion that the non-surviving female characters were more frequently the more sexual ones: "In slasher films, the message appears to be that sexual women get killed and only the pure women survive".

According to the legendary “scream queen” Jamie Lee Curtis, “There‟s a sexual factor, yes. They kill the loose girls and save the virgins in most of these movies” (Rockoff, 2002, p. 14). This further perpetuates the social stereotype in horror films that women are to remain sexually reserved and virginal, if they want to survive. The viewers expect those women who survive to remain proper and virginal, whereas those who are sexually promiscuous often die at the hands of the killer.

And finally... 

Watching horror films is said to offer viewers a socially sanctioned opportunity to perform behaviors consistent with traditional gender stereotypes” (Weaver & Tamborini, 1996, p. 184). When the media, particularly the film industry, repeatedly expose viewers to social stereotypes of violence against helpless women, social acceptance of the behavior occurs. Thus, “early work on this topic found that males exposed to a sexually violent slasher film increased their acceptance of beliefs that some violence against women is justified and that it may have positive consequences (p. 184).

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- Brewer, C. (2009) The stereotypic portrayal of women in slasher films: then versus now. Master's Thesis: Louisiana State University, link

- photograph (Hitchcock on the set of Psycho) via