In horror, the final girl trope is as tried and true as a dilapidated home or a horny couple who’s just minutes away from meeting their doom. She is the one (or among the ones) left standing at the end of the film—the prototypical slasher hero in the once-unlikely form of a young, female character. Only, she’s so much more than any image—especially when portrayed by the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Neve Campbell, and yeah, Brandy Norwood.
The final girl is also typically virginal, free of vice, and the “investigating consciousness” of most horror films. Take Halloween’s Laurie Strode, the brainy yet brave babysitter who opts out of youthful debauchery (underage drinking and dalliances with local jocks) in lieu of keeping kids safe from the legendary mute, masked boogeyman. Or Scream’s Sidney Prescott, who isn’t interested in having sex with her boyfriend (for the most part) and is bold enough to kill him in the end.
But in recent years, the final girl has evolved—many of whom now boast a fairly active sex life (Tara Carpenter) and in fact, are so developed that they secure their own sequel (Maxine Minx).
Because there’s nothing we at Jezebel love more than pitting women against each other, we’ve developed a definitive list of our favorite final girls to face off against one another in the days before Halloween. In this post there are eight final girls and four match-ups: Vote on your favorite from each pair (polls are at the bottom of each slide.) The winners will be back next week for the second face-off. Who will survive: the women of the seventies and eighties? Or our modern heroines? Stay tuned.
