10 Traits That Make Up A Modern Day Horror Movie Final Girl
8. Rule 3 - She Needs A Douchebag Boyfriend To Betray Her
This is the most infuriating trait modern day final girls have.
For today's group of final girls they, unfortunately, often have to deal with tiresome boyfriends that gaslight them, manipulate them, betray them and sometimes even attempt to kill them. For the audience, it's great fun to yell profanities at the irritating guy on screen, but for the final girl it's actually really sad.
Still, this is an experience that many real women have had to go through in their own lives. Perhaps that is why horror movies seem to incorporate this trope so frequently, as it is crucial that our modern day final girl be relatable to us.
For Grace of Ready Or Not, the whole "being hunted" predicament is caused by her wet-blanket of a boyfriend, Alex, and although he spends the whole movie trying to save her, he quickly changes his mind at the end and joins in with his maniacal family's antics.
In a similar situation, Erin from You're Next becomes a victim of her boyfriend when he, and his brother and sister-in-law, begin murdering their entire family in front of her.
Sometimes it's not even a fully fledged boyfriend that betrays our heroine! In It Follows, Jay is betrayed by a random guy she starts dating, forced to go on the run for the rest of her life!
However, the award for biggest douchebag boyfriend goes to Christian from Midsommar! Christian is not a murderer, no, he is a far more relatable version of a terrible boyfriend. This guy ignores our final girl Dani and gaslights her, he completely underappreciates her and treats her god-awfully.
When he cheats on her at the end of the movie and eventually gets his comeuppance, we all smile along with Dani.