The Top 10 Best Final Girls
These Final Girls Give the Monsters Nightmares.
This week, I’ve pulled together a list of the top 10 best final girls to ever appear in horror movies. Horror movie fans are well acquainted with this trope, but a final girl is essentially a female lead that manages to survive a horror movie until the very end. While there have been dozens, if not hundreds, over the years, my list is focusing on the toughest and most badass of all time. Simply surviving until the end doesn’t guarantee a place on this list though, I’m looking for the ones that turned the tables on the villains and turned the hunters into the hunted. Most of these final girls not only made it to the end of the horror movies they starred in but also made the villains regret ever being born. So if you think you might end up in a horror movie scenario, you better hope you’ve got one of these ladies by your side to save your ass. Then again, people around them have a tendency to die. Either way, these women are the stuff of nightmares for even the scariest horror villains.
10. Kristy Cotton- The Hellraiser Franchise
Kicking off this list of final girls is one that went toe to toe with one of the scariest movie demons of all time. Ashley Laurence’s Kristy Cotton found herself pulled into a full-blown nightmare thanks to her evil step-mother (is there any other kind?) who decides to revive her dead uncle to resume an affair with him. As villainous as her step-mother is, she’s got nothing on Pinhead, a sadomasochistic demon with a penchant for leather. Released from a puzzle box known as the Lament Configuration, Pinhead proceeds to do what demons do best and unleashes a slew of horrors with the help of his loyal cenobites. Kristy isn’t going to let that stand though and uses the puzzle box to send him back to hell. Not once, but twice. Guess that make her a bit of a hellraiser in her own right.
9. Grace Le Domas- Ready or Not
2019 actually gave us one of the best final girls of all time in the twisted horror-comedy, Ready or Not. Samara Weaving plays Grace, a newlywed just getting to know her husbands bizarre family of board game heirs. The Le Domas family has a tradition that they play a game with new members on the night of their wedding to welcome them into the fold. However, like most of the 1% their games aren’t exactly family-friendly. Unbeknownst to Grace, the game of hide and seek becomes a deadly game as they set out to hunt her down and kill her before a family curse can do them in. Well, Grace turns out to be a hell of a lot tougher than they suspected and she manages to outwit and even kill several of the Le Domas family members. Grace is a true survivor and total badass with her sneakers and blood-soaked wedding dress.
8. Theresa “Tree” Gelbman- Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U
Few final girls go through character arcs like Jessica Rothe’s Tree Gelbman. She starts Happy Death Day as a bit of a bitch, playing the cliche sorority sister. Her self-absorbed attitude gets a reality check though when she discovers that a killer is loose on campus targeting her. Her first encounter ends pretty badly, but Tree gets another chance at life when she discovers that she’s trapped in a time loop. Every time she dies, she wakes up again at the beginning of the same day. Using her unique ability, Tree not only learns how to be a decent person but also becomes a pretty big badass as she takes the fight to the killer. Tree’s fortitude and sense of humor makes her not only one of the best final girls I’ve ever seen, but she’s also one of my favorite time travelers.
7. Maddie Young- Hush
There aren’t a lot of handicapable final girls out there, which is why it was so refreshing to see Kate Siegel’s Maddie in the 2016 horror movie, Hush. Maddie is a deaf writer who has retreated to a cabin to work on her newest book. As every horror movie fan knows, nothing good happens when you move out to the middle of the woods and she soon finds herself being stalked by a masked killer. His overconfidence when it comes to their game of cat and mouse proves to be his downfall. Maddie turns the tables on her attacker by using one of the rarest skills in horror, common sense. While being deaf might seem like a huge disadvantage, she manages to use it to gain the upper hand more than once proving herself to be incredibly resourceful and cunning.
6. Nancy Thompson- The Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise
Freddy Kruger is one of the most well known and beloved horror movie icons out there. He’s also one hell of a terrifying ghost that can invade people’s dreams and kill them there. At a glance, he seems just about unstoppable. That is until he throws down with Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson. The daughter of the sheriff that helped end the life of pedophile and child killer Fredward Kruger. Freddy doesn’t take too kindly to that and decides to get his revenge by killing poor Nancy. Well, Nancy isn’t going down without a fight and pulls a Kevin Mccallister by laying out booby traps before pulling Freddy out of her dream and into the real world. Once there, Nancy proceeds to kick the ever-loving @#$% out of him, proving herself to be a woman you don’t want to screw with.