Gender in Horror: Analysis (B grade)

The modern slasher horror film has gone quite unnoticed compared to other films in the way that it heavily enforces gender roles. Since the beginning of horror gender has been a huge part of the story with the “damsel-in-distress” generic foundations. However recently, a new common plot line has emerged, one where a murderer or supernatural being kills a group of people one by one until the last person who either kills the enemy or escapes. The main issue many people have with these plot lines are tropes, which is the idea that certain characters are almost always certain genders. The most discussed out of all of the tropes is the idea that the last person alive is almost always a woman, and referred to by critics as “the Final Girl”. However which horror films have challenged this protocol and are they still effective despite going against the generalised format of most big budget films?

The idea of “the Final Girl” is that they are resourceful and intelligent, but they never actually fight back and are quite glad to get away from the killer. But in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Death Proof’ it is an entirely different story as killer “Stuntman Mike” played by Kurt Russel has a taste of his own medicine when particularly tough victims Zoë (Zoë Bell), Abernathy (Rosario Dawson) and Kim (Tracie Thoms) manage to get away from Mike and go back and kill him. I think this really challenges “the Final Girl” stereotype because it shows that as well as being intelligent and resourceful, they are just as strong and capable as men, if not more. The final sequence shows the girls chasing down Mike, shooting him and punching him to death, and going out of their way to do this, whereas in most films “the Final Girl” would enlist an (often male) police man or sheriff to do this job. I enjoy how the film completely defies the gender stereotype of women being “proper” and also represents the fact that men like Mike underestimate a woman’s power.

Some slasher horrors actually mock “the Final Girl” by making it known to the character that they are going to be the last person alive. In films such as ‘The Final Girls’ (2015) and ‘Cabin in the Woods’ (2012) it is interesting to see how the characters develop when they know their role. In ‘The Final Girls’, Max and her friends end up in the film her mum starred in before she died and accidentally kill the woman who is supposed to be the last one standing. While Cabin in the Woods subverts tropes, by bringing the issue home within the characters mind, ‘The Final Girls’ examines them and then completely breaks them. I feel that this is a good way of combatting stereotypes because it brings them also to the viewer’s attention as well as the character’s and this way a viewer can recognise the tropes and more awareness is raised of the issue.

Finally, I believe that horror as a genre is slowly combatting “the Final Girl” protocol in slasher films and making the cast and characters much more diverse whilst still making an incredibly effective and highly rated movie. Although most of the more diverse films are indie and independent films, hopefully the issue will be raised and solved within bigger budget films.