From Halloween’s Laurie Strode in the 1970s to Scream’s Sidney Prescott in the 1990s to more recent depictions like Scream’s new protagonists Sam and Tara Carpenter in the 2020s, people have been watching final girls get bloodied and beaten for decades. But current examples of final girls like Nikki Freeman in Obsession make it clear that torturing women until the end credits roll has gone too far.
With Halloween around the corner, people will dust off their favourite horror classics, including plenty more examples of the “final girl” being squeezed until no blood is left in her body.
Why must women face extreme physical and mental torture just to be considered clever or strong enough to be deemed worthy of survival by the audience and gain the coveted final girl title?
While these depictions open conversations about women’s place in the world and draw parallels to real-world trauma and political situations, a hard question must be asked: is it necessary to continue escalating the cruelty these women face in the name of entertainment, or can horror finally move past the idea that a woman must be broken down to be worth watching?
Every girl that survives until the end of the film is a survivor, but not every female survivor is a final girl. Many horror fans believe a final girl needs to earn the title through getting bloody and wielding a weapon rather than just surviving until the end by chance. Rooted in Carol J. Clover’s foundational film theory, the final girl is the lone female survivor, who typically started out as a very meek, traditional “good girl” and a virgin, who confronts the killer face-to-face, outlasts her peers and ultimately lives to tell about it.
Nikki Freeman is a tricky case in the final girl world because while she does survive and is the ultimate reason that the antagonists around her perish, in classic final girl fashion, she doesn’t fight anyone off to win this title because she is trapped in her own body.
When the real Nikki briefly awakens from the control she is under to beg for her own death rather than continue to endure the things she does not have control over, the film crosses a line from exploring complex psychology and leans into watching her inflict graphic self-harm and violence as a way to cope. Yet, some viewers still watch the film and argue that her tormentor can also be seen as a victim.
The expectations baked into the final girl trope and horror as a whole create a constant narrative cycle, where newer films are expected to escalate trauma to frame a character’s survival as “empowering” and stop viewers from getting bored of seeing the same thing over and over again.
Statistically speaking, men have historically gravitated towards horror more than women. Media researchers in 2021 noted that these viewing choices have remained consistent since Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, and Michael Gurevitch’s foundational 1973 framework.
However, the margin of difference between men and women who enjoy horror, as described by these researchers, is small.
As film scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas points out in her book, 1000 Women in Horror: 1895-2018, women have a deeply rooted passion for the genre, engaging with it across every level, including as actors, directors, producers, writers and showing up as dedicated fans.
The genre doesn’t lack a female audience, it lacks respect for them and the final girl trope is how it rears its ugly head.
When mainstream cinema handles female vulnerability by trading traditional tension for an endless cycle of sadistic suffering, horror begins to drift dangerously close to what David Edelstein dubbed as “torture porn” in 2006. He suggests that viewers engage with this subsection of horror because they can couple their fear of killers with the idea of identifying themselves with the power they hold.
Two decades ago, Edelstein argued that traditional final girl narratives had begun shifting, instead culminating in gruesome deaths for shock value rather than triumph over the assailant, as seen in films like Wolf Creek (2005) and The Devil’s Rejects (2005).
Filmmakers began trying to subvert the expectation of the trope by killing off their final girl, only after seemingly “winning” her freedom.
Following the historic box-office highs of Obsession, Hollywood runs the risk of learning the wrong lessons from its success and contributing more to Edelstein’s claims.
Built around the “One Wish Willow,” a cursed item that, upon activation, makes the user’s one wish come true no matter the cost, the film’s underlying tragedy could be easily flattened by studios that are eager to replicate it for an easy cash grab. The danger here is that future horror projects will be green-lit, not to offer more critique on the commodification and exploitation of women in the world for the benefit of men like in Obsession, but rather to chase the spectacle of gore-filled female distress.
If a female character must endure psychological and physical torture just to prove she is worthy of surviving a two-hour film, we aren’t watching a story about strength. We are watching an entire industry continue to confuse cruelty with character development in the name of entertainment.
So, as you pick your classic final girl horror films to watch this Halloween season, don’t just blindly search for what will scare or shock you the most.
Instead, be picky. Demand better narratives for women, especially ones that treat survival as a triumph of resilience and wit rather than a reward for enduring needless suffering.