Fifty Horror Clichés That Need to Die in a Fire

#14: The Final Girl

Recently, I have had the pleasure of watching the acclaimed serialized ninth season of American Horror Story; 1984. Although the season had a seemingly rocky start with a B-movie horror movie plot line about a Jason Voorhees rip-off known as Mr. Jingles in the very similar Camp Crystal Lake knockoff Camp Redwood, where a slew of revenge killings are about to commence. As is expected, one by one a bunch of inspiring camp counselors are killed in increasingly sinister ways, until our lead girl Brooke Thompson is the sole survivor standing. Right when it looks like she is going to have a one-on-one confrontation with the killer, the plot suddenly does something incredible; completely turn everything on its head by deciding to break audience expectations. Nothing really is as it seems at all, and the real story hidden behind the scenes of this season are quite unique.

It turns out Mr. Jingles was rather a resulting pawn creating in malice from the real mastermind of the entire murder spree, the seemingly overly religious owner of the camp Margaret Booth, who as a teenager framed him for the original murders that she committed at Camp Redwood. Margaret puts the blame on the recent overnight slaughters on Brooke, who spends five years of her life in a high security prison with a pending death penalty breathing down her neck every single day. Right when it looks like Brooke bit the bullet at the date of execution, it is revealed the former nurse of Camp Redwood, Donna Chambers, faked Brooke's demise through the use of a heart rate lowering drug to compensate for releasing Mr. Jingles into the camp for psychological study in the first place. Now assumed dead, Brooke decides to make it her life's mission to make Margaret pay for the pain and suffering she now experiences psychologically for the five years she lost in a high security prison. With the final confrontation to be set at Camp Redwood once more, Brooke and with huge hesitance Donna decide to make Margaret pay with her life for the multiple killings she had committed throughout her lifetime. Once a rip-off, formulaic version of Friday the 13, American Story: 1984 became both a celebration of Slasher movies as well as an expansion on them by going beyond the final confrontation and then spinning the plot completely on its head. It dissected the old tropes of these horror films to make an entity entirely new and stunningly exciting.

However, what peaked my interest the most about this season was a simple few minute discussion made by both Brooke and Donna in the episode "Rest in Pieces". It was a comment on the horror fiction trope of the final girl; the last girl standing in the Slasher movie scenario whose role is to eliminate the particular evil of the story. Brooke, although she hopes to be the one to end the reign of terror Margaret created, dismisses this scenario, wanting not only herself to come on top from the situation but rather the guilt plagued Donna as well. Donna hearing this, decides to revise her statement of the duo becoming final girls to take down Margaret, fulfilling the wish full circle in the finale, appropriately named "Final Girl". This entire discussion for me brought up a very great point made by the cast members of American Horror Story: 1984; the overused pattern horror stories take time and time again in the final act to spare the sole female character.

This trope in my personal opinion is an overused Get Out of Jail Free card horror writers use to appear diverse by sparing the female lead and not the overly masculine male figure. They figure that by letting the female character always be the last character standing against the killer, it makes them seem politically correct in the eyes of the audience. The assumed result is seemingly being ahead of the times, taking advantage of the changing environment females have been receiving globally in the last half century. However, instead these writers make the audience believe that not only they lack creative diversity, but that they accidentally create a sexist environment for male characters. As a result of its overuse, people over time from the final girl trope have fallen into one of two camps. The first are those who are bored by the constant cliché tropes in these storylines, wishing for a more original medium in the slew of formulaic horror stories for something different. The second are those who see this trope as a new form of sexism pointed towards males, making them look like undignified fools compared to the female characters. Either way, the final girl trope is a recipe for disaster that for too long has plagued horror media.

Trying to be politically correct or trying to replicate a story who successfully used the trope, such as Friday the 13 or Halloween, should not be the main point of a horror story. As stated multiple times before in this editorial, the real goal is to surprise and even intrigue audiences with a complex dark storyline that if done by the right person, can create decades of positive discussion among audiences. That is why the final girl trope fails to deliver for most audiences, leaving them instead with frustration for a lack of creativity. In order to please these audiences, old tropes such as these need to be systematically recycled in order to make place for inventive new ones. Having not one but two characters survive in the final conflict for American Horror Story: 1984 is just one example of turning this trope into something entirely new.

When you reach the climax of any future horror story, try to be inventive as to how you would like the conflict to be resolved. Will you instead of killing all but one character allow perhaps a couple brought together by the conflict to end the cycle of malice the main antagonist has brewed? Could you instead have the dark horse secondary characters stand up against the injustice instead of our potentially alive main cast, or have the entire cast play a representative role to put an end to this cycle of evil as spirits? The choice is all yours to choose once you get into the writing process. It us up to you to break the lackluster past plot lines, such as the idea of a final girl even being needed in the first place.