The concept of the “Final Girl”, postulated by Carol Clover in the essay “Her Body, Himself”, has been written about extensively. We can see evidence that supports her theory by observing the “Final Girl” phenomenon in many horror films, most notably in John Carpenter’s Halloween and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but also in more recent films like Wes Craven’s Scream. After films like Jim Gillespie’s I Know What You Did Last Summer (which actually address the Final Girl phenomenon explicitly), in more recent horror movies/thrillers there has been evidence of a trending away from having a prescribed “Final Girl” and instead turning the expected outcomes of horror films upside-down by killing her off. An earlier example of this is seen in the final scene of I know What You Did Last Summer: Julie (the presumed Final Girl) is attacked — and ostensibly, killed — in her bathroom by the murderer, only to be brought back (through the implausible explanation of the past events’ being a bad dream). In this example, the Final Girl is killed (much to the horror of the audience), but the filmmakers don’t have to worry about leaving a bad taste in American audiences’ mouths for too long because they make a sequel with an implausible (but happier) plotline in which the Final Girl is understood to have survived.
Two recent movies that have had notably different variations on the “Final Girl” phenomenon are Carter Smith’s The Ruins and Neil Marshall’s The Descent. These are good examples of this trend because in their original/uncut versions, the female protagonist (whom we fully expect to be the sole survivor) dies, or appears to die, in the final scene. This paper will attempt to compare and contrast the Final Girls in these two films with regard to the conventions of the phenomenon, discuss why or why not they deserve to survive at the end, and examine the presence of the Final Girl phenomenon and/or its lack thereof as a recent trend in horror-thriller films. Interestingly these films are known to have alternate, “happier” endings in which the Final Girl survives, just in case the audience wasn’t ready for a twist on the Final Girl phenomenon—and their expectations—just yet. The original DVD endings are much more sinister. The films’ endings play on our previous experiences and what we have become conditioned to expect, then turn them upside-down. In both The Ruins and The Descent, we at first are lead to THINK the “final girl” gets away; it is then revealed that she does not; whether we actually SEE her die isn’t always clear, but in both films the ending is decidedly bleak. It is obvious that these original endings were too depressing for an American audience, and so they were rewritten in order to be received more positively. The fact that these films were changed from their original formats is interesting, because this “twist at the end” phenomenon has been going on for as long as horror films/thrillers have been around — eventually audiences get tired of the same old tropes and rehearsed storylines. Everyone loves a movie with a twist at the end, it’s just that some twists are more acceptable to an American audience than others.
Film historian and critic Adam Rockoff attempts to debunk the concreteness of the Final Girl phenomenon by providing examples of slasher films in which plenty of “bad” girls survive (in addition to the more virginal ones, traditionally the only ones left standing), or even when the “pure” Final Girl turns out to be the killer (Rockoff 15). What Rockoff fails to address, however, are those films in which the lead girl and protagonist (whom we as an audience have come to identify with and fully expect to escape) actually dies at the end of the film. The “Final Girl” has historically applied only to slasher films, but due to an American audiences love of happy endings, the trend throughout all genres of horror has been to have at least one Final Girl (or Final Person). To have everyone die would just be… unhappy, a little too horrific for Americans to stomach, even within the horror-genre. This trend may be more apparent in movies that are not so much slasher films as horror-thrillers, such as Renny Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea, in which Dr. McCallister meets her watery end at the hands of the very creatures she helped to create. Even Deep Blue Sea, however, has two or three characters remaining at the end of the film; again, to kill EVERYONE off would just be too unhappy. In spite of the presence of shocker-endings like these, due to the American audience’s familiarity with the Final Girl phenomenon and its inherent love of happy endings, horror films in large part always have at least one survivor, usually the main female protagonist. In the two films I will discuss in this paper, these girls are Final in that they are indeed the last ones standing, but they’re not left standing for long.
Characteristics of the Final Girl
In the documentary Going to Pieces: the Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, Sean S. Cunningham (director of the original Friday the 13th) informs us: “the Final Girl in these little morality tales is the person who has embodied the moral code that society thinks allows you to go forward in life”. Adam Rockoff, in his book of the same name, also gives us a list of attributes specific to the Final Girl, such as her resourcefulness, her determination, and her virginity “good girls don’t die, but loose ones do” (Rockoff 14). Both The Descent and The Ruins have main female protagonists at the forefront; we fully expect these characters to be the last one standing, the Final Girl who lives to tell the tale, yet in the original releases of these films both of these girls meet gruesome ends. It is therefore important to compare and contrast these two women (Sarah and Amy respectively), discuss their characters within the confines of the “definition” of the Final Girl, and theorize as to why they do not survive at the end of their films.
Virginal
In The Descent, Sarah fails to meet the “virginal” Final Girl standard, as she is married with a child. However, Sarah’s fidelity to her husband, especially when compared with the deceitfulness of her two-timing friend Juno, redeems that problem and paints Sarah in a more virtuous light.
In The Ruins, on the other hand, Amy is portrayed as less-than-virginal to say the least. While her friend Stacy is faithful to her boyfriend, Amy is accused more than once of cheating on Jeff. Though nobody in the party is by any means a virgin,the other three all remain virtuous (comparatively) by remaining faithful to his or her significant other. Amy’s blatant desire to flirt and dance with other guys behind her boyfriend’s back (see the “Morality” section below) is a surefire way to get killed in a horror film. This behavior puts her candidacy for being a Final Girl into question, even though we know she is the main female protagonist of the story.
Morality
Though Sarah has exhibited Final Girl-style virtue and forthrightness throughout the majority of the movie, she becomes a killer when the mortally wounded Beth asks to be put out of her misery. This is a breaking point both for Sarah’s character and for the movie in general. Even though we know that killing Beth is probably the better choice in this situation, the morality of Sarah’s decision is still in question. Does this act somehow lessen her chances of being somehow morally superior to the other girls, and therefore merit her being a Final Girl? Or is this act a proverbial nail in the coffin (no pun intended), guaranteeing that Sarah will not survive?
Amy’s morality is a little more ambiguous. In an earlier scene, we see her falling-down drunk, recruiting Mathias to “show her a German dance”; Stacy and Eric actually take bets as to whether she will perform oral sex on him. She even has a hangover the next morning —certainly NOT proper behavior becoming of a Final Girl. In a later scene, Stacy accuses Amy and Eric of sleeping around behind her and Jeff’s backs. “You think she’s never cheated on you… she would’ve slept with Mathias if I hadn’t stopped her”. On all of these accounts, Stacy is right! We are meant to question Amy’s Final Girl potential from the very beginning of the movie, particularly when she is put side b side with the comparatively more virtuous Stacy.
Smarter
Sarah is the one to inform us about the “rules of spelunking”, mentioning all the potential problems that can happen when exploring a cave. Soon after we see her fastening Sam’s harness; when Sam complains that she’s being too overprotective, Sarah replies that she’s “just looking after her”. Sarah also exhibits caution where the other girls do not as they proceed through the passage that eventually caves in. From this behavior we can infer that Sarah is more cautious than the other girls, a quality that could be perceived as intelligence when you’re down in a dark and dangerous cave. These cautionary measures bump up her candidacy for being a Final Girl; she’s more perceptive, helpful, and cautious than the others in her group.
Amy, in just about her only exhibition of true Final Girl behavior in the movie, is the only one who suggests that the group NOT go to the Ruins; when the taxi drops them off, she is the only one to question how they will get back to the hotel; moreover she resists going down the hidden path because it “just feels weird”. However, she breaks from this pattern when she ignores Jeff’s request to stop taking pictures, and is the first to step in the vines, dooming them all. It is unusual for the Final Girl to be the cause of the party’s problems, so this is an immediate red flag regarding Amy’s Final Girl potential.
Resourceful Badass
Another hallmark of the Final Girl is that she is often extremely resourceful and uses her surroundings to her advantage. Where she had throughout the first part of the movie been victimized, she eventually reaches a crucial point in which she begins to fight back, often in a very aggressive, even vengeful way (Clover 299, Rockoff 13). I like to call this the “badass” point because from this moment on, we expect our Final Girl to behave more like a badass heroine and less like a victim. At this point, we are completely on her side, because we now believe that this revelation has changed the course of the movie, making it possible for the Final Girl to survive her ordeal. In The Descent, Sarah’s “badass” moment comes right after having killed Beth; immediately afterward, she is attacked by three cave creatures, all of which she dispatches coolly and rather brutally, making her a fine candidate to be a Final Girl. With this scene, however, we see a turning point both in Sarah’s mind and in the movie in general. Sarah takes her newfound empowerment a step too far when she intentionally wounds Juno and leaves her for dead; this action, as opposed to the rather begrudging euthanasia of Beth, is essentially a vengeful murder. While this act would be acceptable had she and Juno had a fighting showdown, it actually becomes objectionable because Sarah does it in cold blood. We now know that Sarah has cracked under all the pressure and descended (no pun intended) into madness, thereby losing her contention to be the Final Girl. If there is one thing a Final Girl is not, it is a ruthless murdering madwoman.
Conversely (and rather tellingly), in The Ruins, Amy doesn’t really ever have a badass moment. She is actually quite weak. Stacy begs Amy to kill her, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Though she is the only one who suggests the group not go to the ruins, for the most part her resistance is more out of laziness than anything else. She doesn’t want to get up early, she doesn’t want to go on a bus in her hung-over state, she doesn’t want to take a two-mile hike: “Nobody said anything about a hike”. She is therefore not as proactive as the other four, which diminishes somewhat her Final Girl status. After the girls’ fiasco within the temple, Amy is the first to realize that they are being quarantined; this revelation is a turning point in the movie, and from that point we expect her to become more empowered, yet she does nothing else of any redeeming value for the rest of the film. The closest she comes to empowerment is her escape at the very end, however this comes as a result of Jeff’s idea, not Amy’s. Stacy tells Amy: “you don’t care about anyone but yourself”. This couldn’t be more evident than when Amy escapes from the compound, taking the deadly vine spores with her and thus contaminating everything she touches. Her vine-infested face in the end shot tells us that she is infected, and not only will she herself die, but so will everyone, and everything, else. Because she fancied herself more important than the containment of the vine menace, the whole world is going die from vines. It’s all Amy’s fault, that selfish brat. A Final Girl would take responsibility for her actions, but Amy does not; therefore, she is NOT a Final Girl! Amy must die! This aspect of her personality is likely the reasoning behind the original ending (in which we see the vines appear on her face); it seems to go against everything that is Final Girl to let her get off scot-free (as she does in the theatrical ending). Unfortunately, the reticence of the American audience to have all the characters in a film — albeit a horror-thriller — get killed off proved too strong, and the film was released with the tamer, more optimistic ending.
An additional point of interest is that in The Descent, it is Juno who is the real villain, and not the crawlers. It is Juno’s fault Sarah’s husband is distracted and crashes the car. It is her fault that the girls are in an unexplored location and nobody else knows where they are. She mortally wounds Beth, leaves her to die, then lies about it to the others. She, and not the crawlers, is clearly the antagonist here. With such a convoluted plot, what can be a happy ending for a Final Girl like Sarah? She can’t go back out there to the “real world”, all the horrific reality of what has just happened will come crashing down upon her and she has nobody left to turn to for support. So, in this instance, Sarah’s Final Girl ending comes when she exacts her revenge on Juno, who is the cause of all this misery. Sarah will actually be happier down in the cave with the hallucination of her daughter and oblivious to everything else, than she would be if she were to escape to the surface. She has nothing left to live for; she has gone as far as she can. Therefore, in a twisted sort of way, Sarah really is a Final Girl; though she dies, she still achieves what, for her, is a happy ending.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Carol Clover asserts that the “horror film so stubbornly figures the killer as male and the principal as female”… she then goes on to describe the deeper meaning of having a male or female monster in a horror movie (Clover 298). This may be true of the Slasher genre, but not in other types of horror films, as evidenced by both The Descent and The Ruins. Something interesting to note in both of these examples is that neither of their respective “monsters” has a gender, per se. The crawlers are both male and female creatures, and the vines are devoid of gender altogether. Perhaps this, then, is the reason why the directors feel so comfortable with killing off their main girls. The antagonists in these two films are unconventional, so it follows that the films’ ultimate endings ought to be unconventional as well. Instead of becoming empowered by turning the tables on a male attacker, the final girls in these two films instead find themselves in combat with an unseen, largely psychological force (to which they ultimately succumb).
A message that both films carries with them could be “everyone wants someone to root for, but in the end, we are all animals when the right circumstances drive us to desperation”. Following this suggestion, we can safely say that the rules of “Slasher films” apply to an expectant film audience, but not necessarily to those directors of psychological horror-thrillers who might have a deeper message to convey. By the laws of everything that is Final Girl, Amy deserves to die, and Sarah deserves to live. Yet, in the original cuts of both films, both girls (allegedly) meet a grisly end. But because American audiences love a happy ending (and because we as a culture have become so accustomed to the concept of the Final Girl — or Final Person — itself) both original endings were replaced with “happier” ones, in which the girls get away, in order to be better received in American theaters. The very fact that the girls survive in the theatrical releases underscores the importance of the Final Girl phenomenon to the American psyche. As Carol Clover has suggested, we as viewers project ourselves onto the main female protagonist (Clover 300). Recent film directors have understood this, and seek to push the envelope within the horror-thriller genre by defying the Final Girl convention. To an American audience conditioned to expect a Final Girl, having her killed at the end truly puts the horror in horror movie.
Works Cited
Clover, Carol. “Her Body, Himself.” The Horror Reader. Ed. Ken Gelder.
New York: Routledge, 2000.
The Descent. Dir. Neil Marshall. Perf. Shauna MacDonald, Natalie Jackson
Mendoza, Nora-Jane Noone, Alex Reid. 2005.
DVD. LionsGate, 2005.
Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film. Dir. Michael
Bohusz. Perf. Wes Craven, Ed Green, Tom Savini, Rob Zombie.
2006. DVD. Velocity/Thinkfilm, 2007.
Rockoff, Adam. Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film.
NC: McFarland & Co. Inc, 2002.
The Ruins. Dir. Carter Smith. Perf. Joe Anderson, Jena Malone, Laura
Ramsey, Jonathan Tucker. 2008. DVD. DreamWorks, 2008.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment