By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
I’m a huge horror fiend, but there are two things that usually keep me from checking out a scary movie: bad reviews and a bad cover. Unfortunately, the 2015 Final Girl suffers from both, which is why I kept ignoring the movie no matter how many times my various algorithms thrust it in my face. I finally caved in and watched this movie for free on Tubi, and I’m happy to report that, despite what the haters say, this is a nearly perfect horror film.
Final Girl Cast Catches The Eye
The cast of Final Girl is pretty lean, but it has some pretty big names in it, including Abigail Breslin (best known for Little Miss Sunshine) as the titular final girl and Wes Bentley (best known for American Beauty and Interstellar) as her no-nonsense trainer. She’s trained by a mysterious organization that gives her James Bond-level skills in order to help her kill bad people. In this movie, the bad people in question are a quartet of murderous boys led by a charismatic sociopath (Alexander Ludvig, best known for The Hunger Games and the Vikings TV show).
While it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I really loved Final Girl for its lean storytelling, including the fact that we don’t get many exact details on who this mysterious organization is, what its purpose is, or even the exact year that this period piece takes place. It’s the ultimate “show, don’t tell” horror film, and that’s only fitting because of director Tyler Shields. Shields is actually a photographer by trade, and to his credit, he infuses every frame of the movie with a signature style, one that finds the balance between the artsy excess of Zack Snyder and the arthouse minimalism of Jim Jarmusch.
Buffy Fans Take Notice
If you like horror movies, you may enjoy how Final Girl subverts expectations in the fine tradition of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The bad guys are a quartet of youthful killers whose grim gimmick involves choosing an unsuspecting target, taking her to the woods, and revealing their plan to hunt and kill her while dressed in tuxedos. They intend Breslin’s character to be their next target, not knowing that she’s spent her whole life training to kill these kinds of scumbags in the most brutally creative ways.
The movie is equally creative, but that can be hard to appreciate unless you look past its very trope-y design. It’s basically the classic revenge story with a twist that the would-be victim is ready to turn the tables, a bit like what you’d get if Buffy Summers hunted human monsters rather than undead ones. Despite some very familiar tropes on display, this movie’s dialogue is sparkling, the cinematography is breathtaking, and the kills are both unpredictable and satisfying, making this one film that’s more than the sum of its trope-y parts.
Not Enough Reviews
Unfortunately, not everyone appreciated Final Girl nearly as much when it came out (first via a limited theatrical release and then through video on demand). On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie currently has a 25 percent critical score, albeit from only 12 critics. And while every fanboy likes to say that the critics did their favorite films dirty, this is one case where most of the critics really were wrong, complaining about things like the plot being basic and the movie being too violent. What the heck were they expecting from a horror movie?
It’s true that Final Girl isn’t going to blow your mind with an intricate plot out of a Chris Nolan movie, but I contend that the best slasher films are the ones that keep to the classic formula of films like Friday the 13th while still managing to surprise us with a few unexpected twists and turns. That’s exactly what Final Girl does: it takes the formula of hunting and killing unsuspecting victims in the woods but makes those victims into would-be victimizers. The result is the rare scary movie where we can root for the brutal killer while she is busy murdering some of the absolute worst people.
Will you find Final Girl as thrilling as I did, or will you agree with the critics that this attempt at an artsy slasher falls short of hitting the cinematic artery? The only way to find out is to stream it for free on Tubi. I’ll leave you with a simple reminder that I wish someone had shared with me when this film came out in 2015: it’s much, much better than its awful cover would imply.
Final Girl is streaming on Tubi.
