Two similarly titled movies came out in 2015, “The Final Girls” and “Final Girl,” and neither has much to say about the roots of the trope of their titles. The Final Girl is the last survivor in slasher movies; she defeats the villain via pluck and luck and the cultural force of the cinematic happy ending.
Delicious wish fulfillment
But the better of the two films, “Final Girl” (a.k.a. “the one with Abigail Breslin”), at least speaks to the desires of viewers to see a Final Girl who makes her own luck. Granted, we’ve seen these types of characters – Ripley, Sarah Connor, Buffy; and after many “Halloween” films, the most famous FG, Laurie Strode – but they transcend Final Girls into another trope, the Strong Female Action Hero.
By titling the film “Final Girl” and using horror visuals and sounds, director Tyler Shields’ artful “Surviving the Game” riff puts the trope in our mind. And then we can immediately relish the subversion on a minimalist scale.
“Final Girl” (2015)
Director: Tyler Shields
Writers: Adam Prince (screenplay); Johnny Silver, Stephen Scarlata, Alejandro Seri (story)
Stars: Abigail Breslin, Wes Bentley, Logan Huffman
Screenwriter Adam Prince could’ve structured it differently, putting a twist in the middle. I sort of wish I could’ve experienced a version where we are delightfully surprised to learn Breslin’s Veronica – seemingly a mere victim — is Rambo packed into a doll-like body. We instead get the “surprise” secondhand via the villains, a quartet of sociopathic “Most Dangerous Game”-esque killers, led by Jameson (Alexander Ludwig, coincidentally a nice guy in “The Final Girls”).
From the first scene, “Final Girl” shows us Veronica’s training by William (Wes Bentley), a suit-wearing pseudo-MIB. Not giving in to the 21st century need to make everything plausible and explicable, Prince is content to craft a world that makes sense only in revenge-lust cinematic terms.
William has trained Veronica from a young age, after she was orphaned via a car crash, to become a killing machine in order to avenge his wife’s death — presumably by the same secret society Jameson’s quartet belongs to. Why he can’t go after his wife’s specific killers, rather than the girl-hunting mini-cult at large, we don’t know, but within the vibe of the movie it doesn’t matter.
Aggressively against-type casting
To say Breslin cuts a figure of a 19-year-old female Rambo is not accurate, but Shields lays down the revenge-quest bricks well enough that I’m happy to follow the path. We see Jameson’s group kill some other girls, so we sufficiently dislike them. And while the fight scenes are embellished by the young men’s drug-induced visions, it’s well communicated that Veronica has done the hard work to get the upper hand.
To say Breslin was hired for her believability as an action heroine might not be accurate, but her casting is nonetheless strategic. She is cast for how her porcelain skin and blonde hair looks when backlit. Thus, Jameson is drawn to his type. And for viewers, she’s like a fragile human doll, but we’re aware of her secret skill set that is as delicious as the ice cream young Veronica gets from William after successful training.
One potential path for “Final Girl” is to have Veronica be a pure human weapon used for good against four evil human weapons. Here is where Breslin’s softness and within-a-certain-range acting skills keep the film from being as cold as the woods where the hunt takes place. In training, we see Veronica cares about William, albeit in a confused way somewhere between the love for a parent and for a partner. It’s a nice touch to keep us off-balance; “Final Girl” regularly transcends its simple structure with weird elements like this.
Shields’ and Prince’s belief in this material serves them well. Also from 2015, “Barely Lethal” is about a teenage state spy who goes to a mainstream high school; it’s a pure comedy. And “The Final Girls” is about a modern teen stuck in an Eighties slasher; it’s likewise a pure comedy.
“Final Girl” is never in the world of comedy, even though it’s not in the real world either. It seriously ponders what would happen if a teen found herself as The Final Girl but had thoroughly prepared herself to fight back. She wouldn’t just win, she’d probably enjoy it. If they’re into the conceit, I think viewers will too.