7 Most Overlooked Final Girls In Horror Movies

7. Jay Height (Maika Monroe) - It Follows

The personification of millennial ennui, Jay is a Final Girl for the 21st century.

She and her friends live in a strange juxtaposition of the past and the future, trapping them in a seemingly timeless setting. Infrastructure is crumbling, poverty is commonplace, and most of the tech on display isn't even modern even though the date clearly is.

Interestingly, certain classic horror tropes find a snug home in this post-boomer debris; adults are scarce, impotent when free to help, and sex is fatal.

Enter the fan-named STDemon, an unstoppable force only visible to those subject to its viral curse. If you sleep with someone cursed themselves, they free themselves and pass the curse onto you. It's like Skynet sent a pissed off version of super-chlamydia back in time to murder people who can't afford their own home.

Despite losing her virginity to someone trying to shake off the curse themselves, Jay refuses to go down without a fight once afflicted. She doesn't fight alone - her friends help - courageously contriving to stop the entity's homicidal tendencies once and for all rather than simply passing the problem onto someone else.

In the end, it's ambiguous as to whether the STDemon has been defeated. But Jay is defiant. Rather than spend the future in fear of having a sexual relationship with someone, she allows herself to be vulnerable. Any future in which she can't love someone isn't really a future at all.