How Fresh Subverts The Final Girl Horror Movie Trope
Warning: SPOILERS for Fresh ahead!
Director Mimi Cave's Fresh is a serpentine horror film that follows the standard conventions of the genre in some ways while completely bucking them in others. Fresh stars Normal People's Daisy Edgar-Jones as Noa, a woman who has grown disillusioned with the modern, app-based dating scene, and Sebastian Stan as Steve, a charmingly awkward plastic surgeon who asks Noa out at a grocery store. Noa agrees to go away with Steve after two successful dates, despite the reservations of her best friend Mollie (Jojo T. Gibbs).
Mollie's wariness turns out to be more than warranted when Steve reveals that he intends to pick Noa apart piece by piece in order to sell her as meat to an underground market of uber-wealthy cannibals. While trapped in Steve's basement, Noa speaks to another one of his prisoners, Penny (Andrea Bang), through the walls of their cells. The two women try to keep each other sane and strong in the face of MCU actor Sebastian Stan's chilling gaslighting, dehumanization, and abuse. Meanwhile, Mollie goes searching for her best friend. Using sleuthing methods that are surprisingly grounded and realistic for a horror movie, Mollie tracks Steve down, only to be kidnapped by him as well when she figures out the truth.
Related: Fresh: Every Sign That Steve Was A [SPOILER]
The idea of women's bodies being desired, seized, and/or mutilated by murderous men in horror movies is nothing new. The genre is famous for «Final Girls,» a term coined by film theorist Carol J. Clover in 1992 to describe the sole female left standing at the end of slasher movies such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Halloween movie franchise. Usually, Final Girls are presented through the male gaze as
Read more on screenrant.com
