Review: ‘The Final Girls’ is a Scream Come True

Review: ‘The Final Girls’ is a Scream Come True

In the wake of iconic horror director Wes Craven’s death, it is appropriate and bittersweet that we are seeing a resurgence of the slasher movie satire he made famous with his “Scream” series.

That film series has been adapted to television recently, and Fox debuted a similar show entitled “Scream Queens” only a few weeks ago. The public response to both shows has been mixed, but the new film “The Final Girls” is looking to make up for it by paying true justice to Craven’s legacy.

“The Final Girls” is a story about Max, a teenage girl whose deceased mother starred in a famous 80s slasher film called “Camp Bloodbath” (picture if the original “Friday the 13th” had been made by a somehow even more juvenile version of Michael Bay). Max and her friends end up being sucked into the movie, and they have to use their knowledge of how the slasher genre works in order to survive.

The idea is about as fresh as most of the vegetables at McDonalds, but the overall product is far more digestible. While “The Final Girls” does not break new ground, it has more heart to it than any other “Scream” clone.

Many film and television writers think that satire and meta-fiction mean that you only have to make clever references to other work and that everything else is just filler. “The Final Girls” pays less attention to the references, though, and more to its characters and their emotions. Who would have ever thought that concentrating more on your own script than on vomiting out other peoples’ ideas would actually work?

“The Final Girls” only really falls short by not being as funny as it could be. The cast is great, but they are not given enough material worthy of their talent, particularly in the case of Thomas Middleditch, who steals every scene that he is in.

The story is surprisingly touching, though, and that makes up for a lot of the film’s other flaws. “The Final Girls” is a cut above the rest, and earns 7 slut-shaming serial killers out of 10.

Brady Simenson
Contributor
bsime172@uwsp.edu

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