The Horror Show
The Final Girls
by Todd Strauss-Schulson
I’ve probably said this a thousand times before, but when it comes to horror-comedies, specifically “spoof” films, two things can happen: it’s gonna be awesome or it’s gonna fail miserably. In the case of The Final Girls, I like to think it was on the awesome side.
The story starts us off with twenty year old Max and her mother, Nancy, a struggling actress. The pair is obviously behind on their bills and it’s evident that Max is the adult in this mother-daughter relationship as Nancy just wants to lip-sync to her favorite songs in the car, throwing the past-due electric bill out the window while Max looks on, mortified. What’s also evident early on though is that these two have a very close relationship and love each other very much. Unfortunately, Max’s world soon comes crashing down when they’re involved in a car accident and Nancy is killed.
We flash-forward three years and Max, failing out of college, is bribed by a friend to attend the anniversary screening of Camp Bloodbath, the 80s slasher film that Max’s mother was in. If Max attends the screening and the Q&A after the show, her friend Duncan will write her papers for her and make sure she passes her college courses. At the theater, Max meets up with Duncan, her BFF Gertie, her crush Chris, and estranged former BFF Vicki. The movie starts and the theater is packed full of rowdy college kids smoking and drinking right in their seats. One thing leads to another as a bottle of vodka slips from someone’s hand and stray ash from a cigarette catches fire, setting the entire theater ablaze. With the exits blocked and people trampling one another, Max and her friends have only one way out: through the screen. With the help of a well-placed machete, Max cuts through the big screen and the group escapes the burning theater.
Max then wakes up in the middle of the woods, her friends nearby. Confused as to where they are and how they got there, they begin to search their surroundings only to come to the harrowing conclusion that they have somehow wound up inside the horror film when Camp Bloodbath begins to play out right before their eyes as they’re forced to interact with the characters. With no other option, the group figures that they must go through the events of the film in order to get out of it. Unfortunately, that means Max must come to terms with the fact that she will not only have to interact with the character that her dead mother played, but she will have to watch her mother die all over again in order to make it back home. As our group interacts with these fictional characters they come to the realization that they are now a part of the film and the events of Camp Bloodbath actually can change, and it’s up to Max to ensure that nobody else dies, including her mom.
I can’t stress enough how fun The Final Girls is to watch. Reminiscent of slasher flicks like Friday The 13th and Halloween, the film isn’t so much a “spoof” as it is a tribute to the classics. You have the camp in the middle of nowhere, the counselors that fall into every perfect cliché imaginable, the seemingly-immortal killer, and the “final girl.” There are tons of laugh out loud moments mixed with some seriously sentimental scenes between Max and her would-be mom that make for a perfectly blended storyline. Don’t expect any nudity or gratuitous violence as this film has a PG-13 rating, but you hardly notice as the originality of the plot and the well-executed acting distracts you from the fact that you won’t be seeing much blood splatter or bouncing boobies.
What I genuinely liked was that the movie, in the end, doesn’t give anything away. It’s an open ending that doesn’t answer any of the questions like “how did Max and her friends end up inside of the slasher flick” or “is this whole thing just a dream?” That’s part of what I think is so flawless about The Final Girls, you really don’t know what just happened, but it was awesome and it left you wanting more.
I do sincerely hope that Max and the gang go on to fight the machete-wielding serial killer in the sequel, and I have no doubt that it will be equally entertaining.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
The Horror Show Menu.