The Final Girl Support Group

Carol J. Clover coined the term “Final Girl” in her 1987 essay “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,” defining this as a trope of 1970s and 1980s slasher movies. Clover’s Final Girl is the sole survivor of the killer’s terror; she manages to successfully fight back until she’s either rescued or she’s killed the killer. Terrorized for hours by the movie’s villain, she spends much of the movie screaming, stumbling, and finding ways to be resourceful. Unlike other victims, the Final Girl is typically presented as virginal and sexually pure; the violence visited on her often has sexual overtones.

Lynnette struggles with the notion that she isn’t a “real” Final Girl, doubting herself because rather than kill her monster or save other people, she played dead while Ricky killed her family:

That’s what they always said about me: I’m not a real Final Girl. The other ones in the group fought back and killed their monsters, but me? I just hung on those antlers like a piece of meat. I just lay there on the linoleum getting my skull pulped. I didn’t save anyone (164).

Her inner insecurity is reinforced by external judgment from her support group members. Heather reminds Lynnette many times she’s not a real Final Girl. Chrissy tells her she hasn’t yet gone through her Final Girl journey yet, and Lynnette’s room in her museum is empty as proof. Even Stephanie doesn’t care about killing Lynnette as much as the other “real” Final Girls.

However, Lynnette ends up transforming the definition of the Final Girl from a lone surviving killer to a member of a team working to protect others. By refusing to kill anyone, even monsters, Lynnette transforms the Final Girl from quasi-monster to peace maker. By inviting Stephanie into the Final Girl support group as a survivor of Skye’s grooming, Lynnette expands the definition of Final Girl even further—any survivor, even one who murdered others, belongs to the group.

Clover theorized that Final Girls embody the feminine and the masculine because, although they are women, they are de-sexualized and use the tools of men—often the monsters’ own weapons. Hendrix challenges this reductionist and outdated gender binary by allowing Lynnette’s character to claim her femaleness. Lynnette is the only Final Girl in the novel who engaged in sexual activity before her monster struck, and she rejects using the tools of her monsters to defeat them. Lynnette notes that after the trauma and terror, Final Girls can finally shed their derisive and diminishing name—they “turn into women” (339).