Halloween has come and gone, but I didn’t make a Halloween-based pop culture list. So here’s one now: my selections for the best “final girls” in horror movie history.
5. Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
A lot of final girls make it to the end by sheer random chance. It may seem that way at first with Sally, but she is above all else a survivor. Even when all she can do just to have a chance to make it out alive is scream, good God, does she scream. The final shot of her covered in blood is the ultimate picture of just barely escaping the clutches of hell.
4. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Halloween
Laurie Strode proves the maxim that a hero is only as good as the villain. Relentlessly pursued by the embodiment of pure evil, she proves just as relentless in defending herself and those she is in charge of.
3. Erin Harson (Sharni Vinson), You’re Next
You’re Next subverts the expectations of the final girl by giving its heroine a background that has actually prepared her a classic horror movie scenario. But preparation to fight back does not make it easy, even when you are successful. Sharni Vinson’s bravura emotional display makes it clear how devastating killing is even when you are trained for it and even when it is in self-defense.
2. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Alien
Ripley’s journey as final girl (or final woman, as it hardly feels appropriate to call an astronautical officer a girl) is the hero’s journey. By the time she has expelled the Alien into space, she has graduated into full-on badass action hero. Maybe it’s because I saw Alien 30 years after it came out, but it seemed like that side of her was always there in the first place.
1. Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), A Nightmare on Elm Street
What earns Nancy Thompson the number one spot is that she fights back, but she must develop that ability to do so over the course of her ordeal. She is the most imaginatively resourceful of any final girl, necessarily so. Even when everyone else is denying the existence of Freddy Krueger, she is focused on figuring out the rules of a realm of existence beyond the normal. When life suddenly becomes unbelievably strange, ignoring this new reality might mean death, and Nancy instinctively realizes this more than just about any other movie character ever.
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