Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 88 Minutes
Todd Strauss-Schulson’s The Final Girls takes the slasher genre and turns it on its head, delivering a consistently funny tale about a group of friends who unwittingly get sucked into a typical, cheesy ’80s horror film. It’s a concept that, on paper, sounds interesting enough, but it’s also one that could fall apart if not executed well. Fortunately, in this case, it all works wonderfully, managing to be an entertaining crowd-pleaser that does the seemingly impossible by making me like a PG-13-rated slasher flick.
Taissa Farmiga plays Max – a young woman who, just a year after the death of her actress mother (Malin Ackerman) – is attending a screening of Camp Bloodbath, the film that launched her mom to scream-queen status. After a fire breaks out in the theater, Max and her friends seek refuge by tearing open the movie screen and going through it, hoping there’s an emergency exit on the other side. They unwittingly end up in the film itself and now must figure out a way to get back to the real world.
The backbone of the film, and the thing that makes it all gel, is the fantastic cast, which is comprised of some very funny people – most notably Thomas Middleditch, Alia Shawkat and Adam DeVine. Aiding their performances is a clever script that fully embraces the fact that these people are indeed in a poorly made ’80s horror film, complete with ridiculous characters and terrible dialogue. Nearly everything that comes out of Adam DeVine’s mouth, who essentially reprises his character from Workaholics, is hysterical, which is made even funnier when bounced off the “modern-day” characters.
Strauss-Schulson has fun with the core concept of The Final Girls and doesn’t just put these people in a horror movie setting; he constantly reminds us that they are literally in a movie, complete with looming music and credits that randomly appear within the world, including one delightful bit where the characters must physically step over words. This adds to the fun factor and makes everything more interesting as we start to figure out the rules of this place.
One thing I didn’t expect from the film was the surprising amount of heart it had. Max lost her mom a year ago, and suddenly she’s in a world where she’s alive and well. The film explores how one might react to this situation, which adds another emotional, more sentimental layer to the film that felt genuine, not tacked on or sappy.
With the seemingly dozens of horror-comedies that came out this year, I had very low expectations for The Final Girls, assuming it would simply be another forgettable entry in the subgenre, but I’m pleased to be completely wrong in my prediction. I had a great time with this film and sincerely hope a sequel is under consideration.
