12 Best Female Movie Characters Of 2016

She might be outnumbered by male characters, but 10 Cloverfield Lane’s female protagonist Michelle more than holds her own in Dan Trachtenberg’s psychological sci-fi horror and all the while elevating the hackneyed final girl trope to new heights. After the paranoid or possibly psychotic Howard Stambler rescues or possibly kidnaps Michelle following a car accident, she wakes up held captive in an underground bunker with a broken leg and from that very moment starts using doing all she can to get the hell out of there despite Howard’s warnings of an alien invasion taking place outside.

Michelle is resourceful and determined from the get-go. She’s intelligent and calculating of her situation and surroundings and despite her terrifying predicament, she never comes across as panicked or vulnerable. Even when she finally makes her great escape and finds her captor was telling the truth all along, she’d still rather face an alien apocalypse and potentially being the last person on earth than be caged like an animal. She is, quite literally, the final girl.