The final girl. That term, coined byCarol J. Gloverin her 1992 bookMen, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film,refers to the trope, predominantly seen in slasher movies, that sees the hero and the one who takes down the villain as a shy, smart, good girl whose life is spared because she isn’t having sex and doing drugs like her friends. The final girl wasseen everywhere in the late 1970s and through the ’80s, before beingresurrected in the latter half of the ’90s. The three most popular would probably beJamie Lee Curtisas Laurie Strode in 1978’sHalloween,Heather Langenkampas Nancy Thompsonin 1984’sA Nightmare on Elm Street, andNeve Campbellas Sidney Prescott in 1996’sScream. The final girl trope so thoroughly dominated horror films in the ’80s that by the end of the decade, audiences had grown bored with the paint-by-numbers formula.Screamonly successfully brought it back through its meta approach that sought to examine the tropes of those types of films.
There was a bit of a second life for slasher films followingScreamwith flicks likeI Know What You Did Last SummerandUrban Legend, but it quickly petered out. For a while, horror grew stale again, and when it did come back it was for gore-filled movies likeSawor possession and haunted house films in the vein ofInsidiousorThe Conjuring. Then cameMaikaMonroein 2014, and the actress became a final girl for the Millennial and Gen Z generations — a vast difference from most who had come before. 10 years later, Monroe is still one of the best final girls in Hollywood. If you want proof of that, look no further than this summer’s horror hit,Longlegs.
A chilling horror thriller directed by Osgood Perkins. The film stars Maika Monroe as Lee Harker, a promising new FBI agent assigned to solve the mystery of an elusive serial killer played by Nicolas Cage. As Harker delves deeper into the case, she uncovers disturbing evidence of occult practices connected to the murders.
‘The Guest’ First Showed What a New Final Girl Could Be Like
First cameThe Guest. It’s more of a thriller but it has a lot of horror elements and is directed byAdam Wingard, who was coming off the surprise success ofYou’re Nextin 2011. StarringDan Stevens, who was riding high himself from his star-making role onDownton Abbey, the film tells the tale of an Army vet from the war in Afghanistan named David Collins who shows up at the family home of a soldier who was killed, claiming to be his friend. The fallen soldier’s mother and father take David in, but as people begin to die, their daughter Anna (Monroe) believes that David is responsible.
You can tell, through the familiar beats, that Anna is destined to be a final girl, but she’s not your traditional one. She has a boyfriend she hides from her parents, she goes to parties, and she does drugs. She’s a character based on how many real teenagers are, not just currently, but how they were decades ago as well. The only difference is that decades ago, Hollywood thought that their heroes, especially female ones, had to be innocent. Today’s audiences crave real final girls, flaws and all. What makesThe Guestparticularly creepy is that, while in the climax, Anna’s parents are dead, and she’s fighting for her life, David is cool and cracking jokes. Anna shoots David, but in pure slasher tradition, he escapes and is seen walking away in the last shot. While it’s the quirky comedy that helpedThe Gueststand out from similar films, it also put eyes on Monroe as a potential new scream queen.
‘It Follows’ Changed How We Look at Female Characters in Horror Films
Later in 2014, Monroe was the lead inthe wildly innovativeIt Follows, written and directed byDavid Robert Mitchell. LikeThe Guest,It Followsis partHalloween-like slasher, but with a dose of something more akin toA Nightmare on Elm Streetas well, while also being completely original. Its plot follows a group of teenage friends as they are being tracked down by an unseen force that is passed on through sex. There’s a clever talking point there about how sex can kill you. In traditional slasher films, it was a trope that led to you being killed, but here, it literally will be the reason that you die.
Monroe plays Jay who isn’t your typical college kid stereotype. She lives in Detroit, her dad is dead, her mother is a drunk (this is hinted at rather than played to melodramatic effect) and Jay goes to community college. Though you can see that she quietly struggles, that struggle is not who her character is. She’s still a person, one who likes boys, gets excited about dates, and even has sex in the backseat of a car on the first date. You wouldn’t ever see Laurie Strode doing that. That is what makes Jay so real and relatable because she’s not a stereotypical character. She’s a young woman who doesn’t fit into any idealized archetype of what a young woman should be.
Maika Monroe Must Fight Her Double in This Atmospheric Sci-fi Horror Movie
The ‘Longlegs’ star has turned in several brilliant horror performances.
After she has sex with her new boyfriend, Hugh (Jake Weary), he reveals that he has passed on a sexually transmitted entity to her that will kill her unless she passes it on through sex to someone else. It’s an extremely rare instance of a horror movie telling us that sex can save you - but it still calls back to old horror stories as sex is how Jay gets into danger in the first place.It Followsportrays the complexities of sex in all its forms, presenting it as a punishment of some sort and as a saving grace. Jay, or any of the women of the story, are not exclusively subjected to this either, every character is at risk of being targeted by the entity - they just need to have sex. Jay has sex with multiple characters in the film (although some are suggested off-screen) and it doesn’t define who she is.It Follows, and Maika Monroe subvert the expectations of the good, final girl, who was usually defined by whether she was a virgin or not.
It’s The Subtleties That Make Maika Monroe the Perfect Gen Z Final Girl
While the film was lauded for its clever premise,thrilling synth score, and the questions it creates throughout, Monroe got some criticism from those who thought she didn’t emote enough. For a final girl, she didn’t scream enough, she didn’t panic enough. She didn’t smile and laugh constantly in the opening scenes like some male writer from the 1980s would have had her do. Instead, there’s a quietness to her in the first act that we can sense without it being explained to us or overplayed. She mumbles. She seems tired. She’s a kid just trying to make it through life. This doesn’t mean that when horrific moments happen, her character doesn’t react. She definitely does. We wouldn’t be scared of the invisible monster if she wasn’t. She cries and screams and panics and runs for her life, but it’s not overdone, and when she does do it, she plays it with a certain weariness, as if she’s already got enough going on with her life, and now she has to deal with a stalking sex demon too.
The Horror of Culture Shock in ‘Watcher’
An exploration into the underused yet highly effective theme of culture shock in horror.
That weariness and the feeling of being overwhelmed that is being experienced by today’s generation is also felt by Jay and her friends. There isn’t some big, heroic last stand where a strong Jay destroys the villain. Instead, they don’t know what to do. They’re just teenagers. The best plan they can come up with is to lure the entity to a pool, get it to follow a scared Jay into the water, then chuck plugged-in toasters and hairdryers at it, hoping that it’ll be electrocuted. It’s a silly plan, but it’s a realistic one, because what would you do if you were in their position?
‘Villains’ Took the Final Girl Trope and Turned It On Its Head
Five years later, Monroe would become another atypical final girl inVillainsby starting out as just that, the villain. Starring alongsideBill Skarsgård, the two actors play a young couple named Mickey and Jules who have just robbed a gas station. They flee to what they think is an abandoned house, but in the basement, they find a little girl tied up. They want to rescue her, but then the homeowners (Jeffrey DonovanandKyra Sedgwick) arrive home, and Mickey and Jules not only have to fight for the little girl’s life but their own, too. It’s a rare feat to turn a villain into a hero during the same film, but it works here, due to Monroe’s presence and acting ability. There is a fragileness in her features that makes you root for her, no matter who her character starts out as. If the final girl trope is ever going to besuccessfully kept going in the Gen Z era, having a layered and realistic heroine who dismisses the “good girl” ideals is the way to go; and Maika Monroe has already shown how to do it.
‘Watcher’ and ‘Longlegs’ Prove That Maika Monroe Is Here To Stay
In 2022, Maika Monroe starred in writer and directorChloe Okuno’sWatcher. Although a smaller film that made its waves on streaming rather than in the cinema, it’s a movie that demands to be seen. InWatcher, Monroe plays Julia, a fish-out-of-water American now living in Bucharest, where her husband, Francis (Karl Glusman), has relocated for his work. Julia knows no one and doesn’t speak the same language as everyone else, and we can’t help but feel sorry for her. It’s not just the plot that brings this emotion out of us, but the look on Julia’s face. Maika Monroe always seems to have this natural ability to convey a deep sadness on her face. She might be a beautiful young woman, but there is also something awkward about her, as if she’s not quite comfortable in her own skin.
That makes her an ideal actress to play a vulnerable character, which Julia most definitely is inWatcher, where she is stalked by a creepy man across the street named Daniel (Burn Gorman), who just might be a serial killer.Watcheris purposely frustrating, as no one will believe Julia that someone is after her. She is constantly treated as a stressed-out, paranoid woman by everyone she knows, including her own spouse. This makes her a weakened target for Daniel, who can gaslight her accusations, while also stalking her out in the open. In one scene, he even goes so far as to carrya bag holding a decapitated human head inside of it, because who is going to believe this hysterical, young, American woman? Julia fights for her life by herself, but no matterif she wins or loses the battle against her male aggressor, a part of her has already been forever defeated by not being truly seen. Julia really is the final girl, all alone.
Watcheris a more subdued film until its bonkers finale, but you can’t say the same about this summer’sLonglegs. TheOsgood Perkinscreated nightmare became a phenomenon even before its release, thanks to the brilliant marketing campaign surroundingNicolas Cageas the titular star, a wild and raving serial killer. Those expectations put a lot of pressure on Monroe, who is the true star ofLonglegsbecause Cage is only in a handful of scenes. It’s her job to carry the narrative, which could have collapsed with a lesser actress.
Monroe plays Lee Harker, an FBI agent on the hunt for the deranged serial killer “Longlegs,“but this is no clone ofThe Silence of the Lambs, and Monroe is not trying to replicateJodie Foster’s Clarice Starling. Both might be strong, independent women with past trauma, but Monroe plays it differently. In nearly every scene, Harker is shown to be sure of herself and brave, while also looking broken and afraid. She doesn’t speak much, and when she does her voice is dulled by whatever pain she carries, and the expression on her face seldom changes. There is a mystery going on behind her eyes, onejust as intriguing as who Longlegs is and how he kills. That makes her the best possible counter to him, a killer who externalizes his insanity in a frightening fashion, going up against a woman who internalizes her strengths and weaknesses, leading to a terrifying clash in their one scene together.
For decades, the final girl trope had its rules of how our heroine was supposed to act. Maika Monroe, with her youth, good looks, and often blonde hair, might look like a stereotypical final girl, but she has never been one. Her characters have a lot more going on with them than being simple book smart, goody-two-shoes, shy virgins who aren’t capable of anything until pushed to their limit. Monroe plays final girls who were pushed to their limit long before we meet them. There is a sadness to them, and a power waiting to be unleashed on the poor entity or wild serial killer who makes the mistake of coming after her.
