10 Traits That Make Up A Modern Day Horror Movie Final Girl
2. Rule 9 - She Has To Be A Bad Girl
She may be as beautiful as a diamond, but she cuts just as sharp. The bad girl in horror movies used to be one of the first victims thrown on the chopping block.
She's the complete opposite of what the traditional final girl was: she isn't pure or innocent, she isn't scared or meek. In horror and slasher movies of old, the films would take pleasure in terrifying the conventional bad girl and turning her into a meek and pleading victim before killing her in gory and inventive ways - ala Tatum in Scream.
This narrative just wouldn't work today, and audiences wouldn't enjoy watching a woman stripped of her confidence and power, so horror movies had to rethink their usage of the stereotypical bad girl.
So, with all of the more recent nuances of a final girl, it just seemed natural to combine the two horror archetypes together.
Most of the time this is done to delicious effect. In Happy Death Day ,Tree begins the movie as an uncaring, unfeeling woman who's helping her TEACHER cheat on his wife! But she becomes sympathetic and likeable as we learn the real motive behind this.
The 2013 Evil Dead reboot flips the bad girl persona on its head with Mia as well. She is overcoming a heroine addiction, but she is a sympathetic character that you root for, not an "evil" caricature of an addict.
And in the new Babysitter sequel, Killer Queen, we are introduced to Phoebe. She's new in school, wears all black and doesn't care what anyone thinks of her. She is the epitome of the bad girl stereotype that has been prevalent in the horror genre for years, but she is played as being in on the joke, rather than being the butt of it.