7 Most Overlooked Final Girls In Horror Movies

The 'Final Girl' horror trope is popularly defined by specific criteria: the girl (or woman) must be the sole survivor of a homicidal monster - having defeated or escaped him or her - and be of virtuous disposition.

Certain horror fans might recoil in horror, but these narrow requirements have been malleable since its inception in the late 20th century, to the coinage of the term in the early 1990s, and beyond.

Even a cursory look at particular iconic heroines - such as the Halloween's Laurie Strode, Alien's Ellen Ripley, as well as Scream's Sydney Prescott - prove the term's elasticity. Strode was rescued from Michael Myers by Dr. Loomis at the end of 1978's original Halloween; Ripley was never entirely alone when the credits rolled (don't forget about Jonesy, Newt, and Hicks); and Prescott had sex (big no-no - although this particular trope inversion was no doubt deliberate).

Given this evolution of what it means to be a Final Girl (due in part to the diminishing of the slasher subgenre) , it's time to shine a light on those who refused to go quietly into that good night, but whose cries of victory and rage went unheard anyway.

The personification of millennial ennui, Jay is a Final Girl for the 21st century.

She and her friends live in a strange juxtaposition of the past and the future, trapping them in a seemingly timeless setting. Infrastructure is crumbling, poverty is commonplace, and most of the tech on display isn't even modern even though the date clearly is.

Interestingly, certain classic horror tropes find a snug home in this post-boomer debris; adults are scarce, impotent when free to help, and sex is fatal.

Enter the fan-named STDemon, an unstoppable force only visible to those subject to its viral curse. If you sleep with someone cursed themselves, they free themselves and pass the curse onto you. It's like Skynet sent a pissed off version of super-chlamydia back in time to murder people who can't afford their own home.

Despite losing her virginity to someone trying to shake off the curse themselves, Jay refuses to go down without a fight once afflicted. She doesn't fight alone - her friends help - courageously contriving to stop the entity's homicidal tendencies once and for all rather than simply passing the problem onto someone else.

In the end, it's ambiguous as to whether the STDemon has been defeated. But Jay is defiant. Rather than spend the future in fear of having a sexual relationship with someone, she allows herself to be vulnerable. Any future in which she can't love someone isn't really a future at all.