10 Best Non-Final Girls In Horror Movies

While The Descent's Beth O'Brien or Sam Vernet are other examples of top tier non-final girls, Natalie Mendoza's Juno Kaplan takes the accolade of best non-final girl from 2005's terrifying subterranean horror.

The Descent tells the tale of a caving adventure gone appallingly wrong. A caving trip meant to renew the bonds of friendship between the group swiftly turns Hadean as they are trapped in a cave system revealed to be brimming with "crawlers"; nightmarish humanoid creatures who hunt them through the terrifying darkness.

Strangely, Juno is incredibly unlikable for several reasons. She gets the group trapped in the first place by revealing they are in a system that only she knew about, and she is also revealed to later have had an affair with main protagonist Sarah's husband before his death. Last but not least, she accidentally kills Beth, mistaking her for a crawler. Contrastingly however, Juno unwaveringly refuses to leave Sarah behind, even in the face of the hellish crawlers.

Ultimately, what lands Juno on this list is just how much of a straight-up badass she is. Already an expert climber and caver, she manages to survive underground with the monstrous creatures, even after Sarah cripples her with a pick axe and leaves her for dead. By the time the sequel rolled around, her time underground has left her a crawler-killing expert. It takes the largest "lead" crawler to finally bring an end to one of the more complex supporting characters in horror history.