The Final Girl Trope In Horror, Explained
Horror is the only cinematic genre in which the audience enters with a full and well-earned expectation that most of the characters they're introduced to will die before the end credits roll. However, there's one character who can almost always be expected to survive until the bitter end, and that's why they call her the final girl.
The slasher film is in something of a sorry state in the modern day. Its heyday is decades behind us, its current incarnations are either meta parodies or classic series that have been prolonged beyond their era. Some elements of the subgenre remain, however, in the cultural conversation.
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The final girl is the sole survivor of the slasher's rampage. A mass of characters are introduced, typically with one or two identifiable traits each, then they begin being picked off one by one. As originally identified, the final girl is typically kind to the point of naivety, strictly sober despite her friends' indulgences, and completely chaste. Her supposed moral superiority marks her out as «better» than the other victims. The audience is meant to see her survival as good and right since she didn't do any drugs or have any sex. For her good behavior, she's typically rewarded with prolonged survival and a confrontation with the killer of the piece. This confrontation almost always goes in her favor. She may defeat the killer, or barely escape with her life, or survive long enough to be rescued. Over the years, however, aspects of this trope have died, and the term has become more general.
The original final girl is Sally Hardesty, the main character portrayed originally by Marilyn Burns in Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Elements
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