Task 2 - Representation

The representation of women teen horrors.

Now a days more and more horror movies are coming out and they normally, depending on the age rating have teen characters in the film such as for example in scream , a bunch of high school teens that all get killed or in jeepers creepers when they have high school teens who have to fend for their lives. The reason why this is coming more popular is because most of the horrors that come out now more teens aged 16-25 are interested in this type of genre compare to older people who like films about law and children which Disney, of course this could be very stereotypical but in some sense its true and the creators know this so they true to have teen characters so that the audience can relate to them and feel more involved within the movie.

Typically in most horror movies there is always a damsel in distress if you like who runs away from the killer and is the “last girl standing” usually this appears in slasher movies when everyone is dead but there is one woman lefty standing, examples of this could be “house of 1000 corpse’s” where one girl is left running for her life. But this character of the last girl standing can be very easily mistaken for the helpless victim as the helpless victim would be the character that does nothing and knows she is going to die and doesn’t try to stop it , she basically gets caught up in it all but whereas the “final girl” is the last person let who keeps fighting such as the film “Nightmare on elm street” where everyone dies except the final girl who goes to fight Freddie to try and kill him.

This all could be classed as very stereotypical because it’s always that same as last women standing etc. But in some films there is the last woman standing but who takes on a different role at the same time just like in “I spit on your grave” the women comes back “final girl” and kills all the men in the film. This could give a different look into the representation of the women in the film because normally they are the helpless victim but this time she takes revenge and the role of killer and final person is switched.

Many people say that you always need for a good horror to have a final girl in it and in some respect I think you do as it gives us a sense that will the last person survive and if so what happens next and is a perfect way to end on a cliff hanger.  With the films that I have seen that have a helpless victim and a final girl they have all worked well and I think it is a good thing to have in a horror movie. I think that it would be good in my own horror movie to have one to build dramatic affect to think what will happen next.