Tag: Tyler Shields

Final Girl (2015): not your typical slasher film

On By Erica L. WrightIn Horrific moviesLeave a comment

 

Tyler Shields’ 2015 meta-horror film Final Girl seems to be rather divisive among horror fans, likely because it does not follow the typical slasher film narrative at all. In some ways, it inverts it. What it does is offer a fresh interpretation of the “final girl” character as described by Carol Clover.

Whereas the classic slasher film features a masked misfit who dispatches several disposable victims before being vanquished by the final girl, this movie has four well-dressed Nice Guys who make a sport of hunting and killing young women as a sport. The setup is a lot more like The Most Dangerous Game than Friday the 13th, for instance.

Unlike the typical slasher film final girl who discovers her inner strength under duress and then and fights back, protagonist Veronica was always strong. She was trained as an assassin from childhood by a mysterious shadow organization, and assigned to kill the four murderers. Much of the film becomes her stalking them, not the other way around. As a nice touch, she doses each of the men with hallucinogenic drugs so that they can experience their own worst fears before they die.

The look of the film is also very different from that of the classic slasher film. The lighting and color scheme is deliberately artificial and stylized, and the characters dress and behave as though they were transported from the 1950s.

This is not a film for those who want a conventional slasher film, but I will recommend it to fans of women’s revenge films.

Men, Women, and Chainsaws: essential reading for every horror fan

On By Erica L. WrightIn Horrific Books, Horrific movies, Scary ScholarshipLeave a comment

Today, I’m reviewing the scholarly book that every horror fan and has to read. Carol. J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film is hands down the most important work of horror film criticism, and one of the most important works of film criticism, period. Prior to this book, horror was either ignored by “serious” critics and scholars, or condemned as hopelessly misogynistic. Men, Women, and Chainsaws did a lot to legitimize the genre and argue for feminist subtexts in the horror films of the 1970s, ’80s, and early ’90s. Clover also argued against the notion that the predominantly male audiences of the time identified with the (usually) male killer, stating that audience members identified across gender lines and with the surviving female character.

Clover is  perhaps the only academic author to influence horror filmmakers in a signifiant way, and even appeared in the pseudo-documentary S&Man (Sandman). If you are wondering why there are films and novels with titles like The Final Girls (2015, dir. Todd Strauss-Schulson), Final Girl (2015, dir. Tyler Shields), Final Girls: A Novel (2017, author Riley Sager), The Last Final Girl (2012, author Stephen Graham), Final Girls (2017, author Mira Grant), and Last Girl Standing (2016, dir. Benjamin R. Moody), it’s because of Carol Clover. In the chapter, “Her Body, Himself,” Clover coined the term “Final Girl” to describe the lone female survivor of slasher films. Usually the Final Girl is virginal, tomboyish, and more resourceful than her peers.

While the Final Girl concept is the most referenced and recognized aspect of Men, Women, and Chainsaws, the rest of the book is important as well. In “Opening Up,” Clover explores gender role subversion in supernatural horror films, as well as racial politics along the lines of “Black Magic” vs. “White Science” (think of The Serpent and the Rainbow as a prime example of this). The chapter “Getting Even” explores rape-revenge films, particularly I Spit on Your Grave, one of the most unfairly reviled and condemned films of its type. The final chapter, “The Eye of Horror,” discusses the role of voyeurism in the enjoyment of horror and the issue of viewer identification with killers and victims.

Men, Women, and Chainsaws is now 25 years old. While many aspects of the book are still relevant today, the horror genre has gone in new directions, sometimes creating new subgenres that are now likewise being unfairly dismissed and condemned. Clover’s book is a vital reminder that there needs to be ongoing engagement with and analysis of the horror genre as it evolves.