Halloween Movie Fest
Halloween (1978) and The Final Girl Trope
Halloween (1978) is one of the most famous horror movies ever made. It helped create the entire “slasher” subgenre of horror and has had not just sequels but one set of reboot films and, rumor has it, yet another pending reboot. It’s a franchise that can’t and won’t die, but it’s biggest contribution to horror, for good or ill, is the cementing of “The Final Girl” archetype with Jamie Lee Curtis’ character, Laurie Strode.
The basic plot of Halloween is extremely simple. Carpenter and his producing partner, Debra Hill, both were looking for a story that could appeal to a lot of people, and be a visceral experience. Hill suggested they focus on babysitters since most people had either been one or been babysat by one. The film, itself, talks about the “Boogeyman” and compares Michael Myers (no, not the comedian) to that figure stalking you from your closet or the shadows. However, like most slashers, the plot can be related easily in one sentence: Escaped mental patient, Michael Myers, returns to his hometown fifteen years after his first murder spree to stalk babysitters.
That’s it. Simple, elementary, and scary as Hell. In the original film, the killer isn’t given a motive (it’s not until the film’s sequel that we learn Laurie is his baby sister all grown up and adopted out after the initial massacre). He’s like a great white shark or a force of nature, the one charged with delivering Laurie’s fate to her or at least trying to do that — she’s marked for death and he’s the one to do it.
The film is basically formatted around three acts. First, there’s Halloween night 1965 where we see a six-year-old Myers murder his older sister for no discernible reason. Then the day of Halloween in 1978, we follow his psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis, as he tries to track down Michael after he’s escaped from the mental asylum. During the day, Myers sets his sights on Laurie Strode and her friends, and we see her growing unease as she sees him out of the corner of her eye at class and at home. She struggles to convince herself it’s all in her head, but it’s clear danger is looming for her. Then the final act is Halloween night where Michael kills three of Laurie’s friends before focusing on her and her two babysitting charges.
SPOILER
This is an almost forty-year-old film but, still, the film ends when she fights back and then Dr. Loomis tracks Michael down at the house in which Laurie’s babysitting. He shoots Myers, causing him to fall through a window to the lawn below. At first, it seems fatal, but then when Loomis looks back the “boogeyman” has escaped and could be anywhere. The film ends on shots throughout the neighborhood of all the dark places Myers could still be lurking with his ominous, heavy breathing haunting the viewers’ ears.
Again, a very simple story that, once paired with Friday the 13th, created the dead teenager subgenre.
I’m not saying that slasher films or their prototypes didn’t exist before this film. I’d argue that both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the vastly underrated Black Christmas are at least proto-slashers that both had to have influenced Carpenter as well. However, this was the outstanding box office success that really brought the genre forth. It’s also the film that created the idea of “The Final Girl,” the lone women survivor who has lived through the carnage and then manages to subdue the killer at the end.
The term was officially coined in 1992 by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. There are a few traits that generally are shared by the Final Girls of Horror (Laurie from Halloween, Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Sidney Prescott from Scream to name a few). Usually, they have more gender neutral or ambiguous names. They’re also the “good girl” in their group of friends, the girl who has preserved her role in the morality tale by not engaging in sex or drugs and remaining pure enough to slay the monster at the end. Also, these final girls kept the upper hand on their tormentors by embracing phallic imagery and getting tougher and more masculine themselves. For example, in Scream, Sidney stabs Ghostface more than once with a knife and in Halloween, Laurie stabs Michael in the eye and throat with a sharp knitting needle.
Sometimes I struggle as a feminist and a lover of horror. Compared to the torture porn genre (think Saw and Hostel), most of these slashers might seem less depraved but they were huge targets of moral outrage by critics in the 1980s. The furor raised up over Silent Night, Deadly Night is particularly noteworthy, but critics, especially, Siskel and Ebert were vehemently opposed to slashers as a genre since they seemed to encourage violence against women. Also, I can agree with B.J. Coangelo of Icons of Fright to an extent.
I do think that the final girl trope, like any trope, can limit the depth of characters within horror. It’s a good point to realize that the slasher’s typical mold of “Final Girl vs. Killer” basically sets up the one (usually virginal) good girl against the (usually evil) manly killer. Now, that’s not always the case. For example, Friday the 13th plays with assumptions well both with who the actual killer is and the fact that Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) partakes as heartily in partying as anyone else (and this was 1980). However, it can enforce too often the limited dichotomy of evil men and good women and, frankly, has racist overtones. There are few final girls in horror that are women of color. This buzzfeed list stretches to include a few men, but it’s a very snow white list indeed. Technically, Brandy’s character in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer survived along side Jennifer Love Hewitt, but it’s exceedingly rare to see a woman of color end the day standing as a final girl.
Overall, I do think that adhering strictly to that archetype as its most often portrayed can be detrimental to horror.
However, I also enjoy the final girl trope and believe it has its merits as well. First, even played completely serious and with no subversion, I agree with Dahlia Grossman-Heinze of Bitch Media who pointed out that there’s a level of catharsis that comes from watching the heroine’s journey. In Halloween’s case, we watch Laurie change from an insecure girl, afraid of even asking a boy out, to a woman who sticks her neck out to protect the children she’s sitting and keeps a killer at bay with ingenuity and courage. That’s the same tale we see again and again with Nancy or Sidney or the other finals girls. Since these films often end up with sequels, we also see realistically how surviving these stalkers over and over impacts these women’s lives and characters. In Halloween: H2O, Laurie’s gone underground and become a functional alcoholic but summons the courage to fight back once again when Michael finds her and her son. The final ten minutes include her wielding an ax to a satisfying conclusion and where good faces off with evil (and the less said about Halloween: Resurrection, the better). Again, as Grossman-Heinze points out, maybe it’s because so often life doesn’t end up that way. The victimized don’t have such direct and visceral ways to fight back. There’s something healing in seeing a woman who’s been stalked or hurt before take control and turn into (usually) her own hero.
Second, in the latter years, at least starting with Scream, we’ve seen a subversion of the final girl. Sidney has sex during the night of Ghostface’s most prominent massacre but still lives to defeat the killer stalking her. In the horror-comedy, Cherry Falls, the killer will only murder you if you’re a known virgin so the teens of the town decide to save themselves by throwing sex parties. In Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods, the virginal final girl is a more metaphorical purity and, frankly, the would-be final girl in that film throws everything on its ear with her own plans. Writers and genre fans know enough about the tropes to both subvert and play with them and honor them in inventive ways and the final girl is no different. The only real risk comes from adhering to it too closely or using the formula as an excuse to under-serve diverse characters or to reduce any characters to flat, 2-dimensional stereotypes just waiting to be hacked up.
Of course, any horror movie that makes characters so bland or hate-able that you’re rooting for the killer (basically any Eli Roth film) has failed from the start. We love and root for the final girl, flawed as she may be, because we care about her and want to see her live. Her journey for survival becomes ours by proxy, and that’s worth watching.
Just as long as the writers work to keep it fresh, multidimensional and engaging, we’ll be there and be ready to cover our eyes!
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