10 Horror Final Girls Who Didn't Survive Their Movie
Falling at the final (girl) hurdle.
Final Girls are a breed of their own. Smart, strong, independent, and altogether the badasses of the horror genre - they're the women that adapt to whatever hellish situation they're trapped in and fight tooth and nail to ensure they make it to the end. You get in the way of a Final Girl, and you'll be paying with your life.
And horror movies love to let you know who this will be from the very opening moment. They train our focus onto one underprepared, naive girl that has to transform into some otherworldly powerhouse of endurance, marking them out as the chosen one with horror movie magic powers of survival.
But every so often, this surefire hero we're all but convinced will be kicking ass and digging graves is snatched out of our comfort zone, killed in cold blood to shake up a formula and prove not even the characters built to outlast these horrors can manage it.
They're the would have beens, the should have beens- not Final Girls, but the Girls that fall at the Final hurdle, instead.
So here's to the women that were bonafide survivors in everything but survival. Let's pour one out for the Final Girls who never were...
10. Ellen Ripley - Alien 3
This is the only entry that stands as an already established Final Girl that was forced to take the L in a sequel, but certainly not an anomaly by any horror movie standard. In fact, it's something of a running joke to splatter your sole survivor all over the screen pretty sharpish when you get to a new instalment of a franchise, so Ripley was lucky to make it this far, really.
After being the most rational, resourceful, and radical member of the team in both Alien and Aliens, ensuring her survival through TWO xenomorph outbreaks, as well as doing her dang best to keep as many others alive as possible in the process, Ripley is forced to kill herself upon learning she is carrying a xenomorph embryo. It's not pretty, but it is logical, and another decision done for the greater good of humanity rather than for herself.
Ripley of course comes back in other forms, but not surviving a movie that exists purely on her own strength of character selling so well in the first place is a tough embr- sorry, pill, to swallow.