The Final Girls (2015)

Official trailer

The Final Girls is Todd Strauss-Schulson’s 2015 American meta-horror comedy depicting a grieving teenager and her friends pulled into the 1980s slasher film starring her dead mother where a masked killer stalks the cheerleader and counselor characters at the summer-camp setting. Taissa Farmiga plays Max Cartwright.

Malin Akerman plays Amanda Cartwright. Adam DeVine plays Kurt. Alia Shawkat plays Gertie. Thomas Middleditch plays Duncan. Nina Dobrev plays Vicki Summers. Alexander Ludwig plays Chris Briggs. M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller wrote the screenplay.

Stage 6 Films distributed the film in October 2015 to serious critical reception and later cult reputation as a highly accomplished meta-slasher production of the 2010s.

A slasher spoof has no business making me misty, and this one does it more than once. Taissa Farmiga and Malin Akerman give it a real ache that the jokes never cancel out. My reservation is with the friends orbiting them, who are funny in bursts and thinner than they should be, and that keeps it at an 8.

Among contemporary meta-horror productions, The Final Girls is a standout and an entry in the meta-slasher subgenre with unusual emotional weight. The screenplay treats the slasher-film-within-the-film as real setting instead of as decorative reference, with Max Cartwright’s grief over her mother’s recent death given full dramatic weight even as the surrounding meta-narrative comedy proceeds. Todd Strauss-Schulson’s direction handles the tonal balance between sincere emotional content and meta-comedy commentary with real confidence.

The cheerleader-and-counselor camp setting connects the film to both the 1980s slasher tradition and the cheerleader-horror crossover subgenre that this canonical list addresses.

The Mother-Daughter Center

The screenplay’s emotional center is the relationship between Max Cartwright and her dead mother Amanda Cartwright, who appears in the film-within-the-film as the cheerleader-counselor character Nancy. Max’s opportunity to interact with her mother through the meta-narrative device gives the film real grief-work content that the surrounding horror-comedy material could have undermined. Taissa Farmiga and Malin Akerman’s chemistry sustains the emotional throughline.

The closing-act sequence where Max has to accept Amanda’s choice to stay inside the film is the moment the whole movie exists for, and it wrecks me. The screenplay treats the supernatural premise with full dramatic weight, so the payoff lands with a force that purely comic meta-horror can’t touch. I’d put that goodbye up against any scene in any horror film of the decade.

The Slasher Genre Commentary

Through its film-within-the-film premise, The Final Girls is real commentary on slasher-genre conventions. Max and her friends must work within the 1980s slasher’s particular narrative rules, including the rule that the masked attacker kills female characters who have sex with male characters. The screenplay treats these conventions as actual operative rules in the film-within-the-film’s universe, with the characters consequently strategizing survival through their knowledge of the rules.

The commentary handles the slasher genre with affection instead of pure ironic distance. Camp Bloodbath is treated as something the characters care about, and I think that warmth is what separates this from smirkier meta-horror. I laugh at the jokes about the rules, but I’m more charmed by how plainly the film loves the cheap eighties slashers it’s poking at.

The Cheerleader Camp Setting

The 1980s slasher film within the film is titled Camp Bloodbath and takes place at a summer cheerleading and counselor camp. The setting connects The Final Girls to both the wider 1980s slasher tradition that Friday the 13th and Cheerleader Camp established and to the cheerleader-horror crossover subgenre. The cheerleader-uniform iconography appears throughout the film-within-the-film sequences with real visual care.

The cheerleader characters inside Camp Bloodbath get far more interiority than the 1980s template ever allowed them, and the performances lift the film-within-the-film above pure reference. I’d have wanted the same care for the characters who came in from the real world alongside Max, and a couple of them feel like they wandered in from a thinner comedy.

Is The Final Girls worth watching?

An 8, and an easy recommendation for anyone who loves horror. The mother-daughter story gives a meta-slasher real grief to work with, Farmiga and Akerman make that grief land, and Strauss-Schulson keeps the jokes and the sadness from stepping on each other. The thin supporting friends are the only thing holding it back from a 9, and I’d still take it over nearly every straight slasher of its decade.

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