8 Final Horror Movie Girls Who Ended Up Dying Anyway

There are a million and one reasons why most of us want to forget last year's road trip back into redneck country, David Blue Garcia's Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The characters were thin, the generational touchstones a little too caricature, the general air of stupidity overwhelming. But the diabolical and critically panned flick committed perhaps no greater sin than killing off a true original.

Final girl of the very first film, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and widely regarded as the very catalyst for the trope, Sally Hardesty (originally played by Marilyn Burns, but recast with Olwen Fouéré for the 2022 sequel) goes through a lot to secure her retirement. Her and her friends are tortured and mutilated by Leatherface and the Sawyer family before Sally manages to break free and escape, dripping with blood and laughing maniacally, the sole survivor of her ordeal. Fast forward twenty years and Sally puts in an appearance in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994), where she once again makes it out alive.

Come 2022's installment, however, Sally -- now a badass hunter, or so we're supposed to think -- goes toe-to-toe with Leatherface and makes every mistake in the book; Taking him on in close combat when she has guns, not executing the double-tap, you name it. Thus, much to long-time fans' chagrin, she bites the dust, and we're left with lip-chewing, phone-gazing, gen-zedder final girl Lila (Elsie Fisher). Do better, Texas!