From Halloween’s Laurie Strode to Scream’s Sidney Prescott and Alien‘s Ellen Ripley, Final Girls have been slashing up the screen and facing off against some of horror’s most terrifying villains for decades – but a modern Final Girl just may be better than the rest. The iconic horror trope is regarded to have gotten its start back in 1974 with Black Christmas’ Jess Bradford and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Sally Hardesty and has continued into recent years with X’s Maxine Minx and Terrifier’s Sienna Shaw. The 2010s was another influential decade for horror in cinema, and one movie from the period that introduced fans to one of the best Final Girls of all time just returned to streaming.
Videos by ComicBook.com
The movie in question is You’re Next, and it’s now on Peacock. The film is one of the most influential horror films of the 2010s and presents an epic Final Girl in Erin, who joins her boyfriend at his estranged family’s reunion only to find herself in a cat-and-mouse game of survival when a group of masked assailants attack. Adam Wingard’s slasher home invasion movie joined the NBCUniversal streamer’s lineup on September 1st. The film stars Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci, Wendy Glenn, A. J. Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Barbara Crampton, and Rob Moran.
Why You Should Watch You’re Next
If you’re a fan of movies like Ready or Not and The Strangers, then you’ll like You’re Next. The movie combines the best aspects of those two prior horror installments to create an absolutely chilling, thrilling, and entertaining watch. The movie takes the suspenseful, gritty atmosphere of home invasion stories, complete with brutal and creative kills, and balances it with a wickedly good sense of dark humor, leading to a movie that you’ll want to rewatch again and again.
Above everything else, though, You’re Next stands out for perfectly subverting the Final Girl trope. The movie easily could have fallen into the age-old trap of presenting its Final Girl as a helpless victim, but Erin demonstrates surprising resourcefulness and becomes ruthless in her own right. In fighting back against her attackers and going back for more, she shifts the power dynamic in a way that makes it so you can’t help but root for her and effectively redefines the “Final Girl” as an empowered and deadly force. Rather than being a damsel in distress and passive in her role as a survivor, relying on being found or being the last one standing, Erin is a horror heroine who takes her fate into her own hands and fights back in the most epic way. Her character is a refreshing change from typical horror movie characters who fumble in their attempts to survive, and she earns a spot as one of the best final girls in horror who ultimately set the stage for many of those who followed.
Other Horror Movies Now on Peacock
Peacock subscribers looking for a scare have plenty of horror movies to choose from. The NBCUniversal streamer added dozens of spooky titles to its lineup in September, and the largest number of those titles arrived on September 1st. Films including The Birds, The Craft: Legacy, Drag Me to Hell, Halloween II, Scream 4, and Terrifier 3 are now available to stream on the platform.
Peacock is set to bring even more scares in October, the platform’s October 1st list of arrivals featuring titles such as Exorcist: The Beginning, several Friday the 13th movies, The Omen (1976), Ouija: Origin of Evil, The Purge, The Ring, and the first three Scream films.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
image courtesy of 20th Century Studios -
Image courtesy of Prokino Filmverleih -
Image courtesy of Sony
