Sarting With the End: The "Final Girl"

According to wikipedia, the final girl is "... a horror film trope that specifically refers to the last person (usually a woman or girl) alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story". Almost every horror film that I can think of, from "Nightmare on Elm Street" to "Scream", feature a final girl, usually as the protagonist of the movie. I will use a few differnet examples of horror films that utilize the final girl in order to point out traits of the trope as well as problems with it.

Halloween(1978)

Jamie Lee Curtis who starred in "Halloween" as Laurie Strode was the first and one of the most famous final girls in horror history. Her character pretty much set the standard for all other final girls, as well as basic plot rules for th slasher sub-genre.
First and foremost, Laurie was a virgin and abstained from the vices that all of her friends were doing in the movie, like drinking and smoking pot. These are almost always characteristics of the final girl, she is chaste and morally elite. The final girl also always seems to be smarter or more intuitive than her female costars, who are usually all killed. In fact, it is usually the final girls' own curiosity that propels the plot forward, with her usually being the final and only person to confront the killer. In the case of Laurie, she tries three times to kill Mike Myers stabbing him, with a knitting needle, clotheshanger, and finally a knife. Director John Carpenter says, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy.". This statement counters many people's view that the trope of the final girl is usually mysogynistic and also a statement against the free-love generation of the 70's.

Alien(1979)

Sigourney Weaver's character, Ellen Ripley, in "Alien", which came out only one year after "Halloween", took the final girl in the oposite direction. Ripley is the take-charge, intelligent, and sexy commander of the spaceship Nostromo, who, after all of her crewmates are killed by the alien onboard, is left alone to save the ship and destroy the alien. "Alien" was a pioneer in the sub-genre of body-horror, with Weaver being one of the first futuristic heroines. This movie and Weaver's character seemed to be woman positive since she is so strong and independent, however, it does also exploit Weaver by featuring an entire scene of her running around in her undies.