By Ben Bussey
We all know very well how frustrating it is to see new movies endlessly recycling the same basic concepts with little to no variety. However, there’s a particularly potent brand of frustration that emerges when a new movie comes along with a comparatively fresh and inventive premise, but then fails to fully do it justice. So it is with The Final Girls, a glossy comedy horror which is impressive in its ambition, and effectively executed in parts, but ultimately bites off way more than it can chew.
In a nutshell, it’s The Last Action Hero (or, if you’re less of a populist, The Purple Rose of Cairo) as a slasher movie. Our main protagonist Max (Taissa Farmiga) is the daughter of struggling actress Amanda (Malin Akerman), whose only success story after decades in the business is her breakthrough movie Camp Bloodbath, a cult 80s slasher bearing considerably more than a passing resemblance to the Friday the 13th series. Sadly, this is to remain Amanda’s prevailing legacy, as the opening scene sees her killed in a horrendous car crash (which, somewhat inexplicably, leaves passenger Max completely unscathed).
Skipping ahead to three years later, the now college age Max is still struggling to move on with her life when, under duress, she accepts an invitation to an anniversary screening of Camp Bloodbath at a local independent cinema. Seated with her best friend (Alia Shawkat), their best frenemy (Nina Dobrev), her best friend’s movie nerd brother (Thomas Middleditch) and her potential future boyfriend (Alexander Ludwig), Max suffers through the bad acting and unconvincing plot developments as long as she can – but just as she gets up to leave, the cinema bursts into flames. With all the exits seemingly blocked off, Max and co try to escape by literally cutting their way through the screen – and, in a puff of movie magic, promptly find themselves living Camp Bloodbath for real.
Sounds like the stage is set for a Scream-esque comedy horror bulging with knowing jokes and references – and, dependent on your point of view, that’s either a great thing or a living nightmare. I lean more toward the former, but can empathise with those who’d say it’s the latter. All in all, the humour of The Final Girls doesn’t get too smug; the film doesn’t feel the need to beat us over the head with slasher deconstruction the way dear departed Wes Craven’s 1996 hit and its many imitators did, and instead credits the audience with having a decent working knowledge of the genre’s conventions. Plenty of the gags work well enough; none, however, are exactly laugh out loud funny.
There’s a pretty significant problem with the tone and content which, in this instance, can be attributed to one frankly baffling decision: why the hell did anyone think it would be a good idea to make The Final Girls a PG-13? Just so there’s no misunderstanding here, I am not diametrically opposed to PG-13 horror as a rule the way some particularly willful fans tend to be; there are plenty of subgenres within horror that work perfectly without the need for R-rated content. However, a slasher movie – even a parody of one – is not one of those subgenres. There needs to be gore; there needs to be more than a single F-bomb. Nudity isn’t necessarily a cast iron prerequisite – my personal favourite slasher, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, is notably devoid of boobies – but if you’re going to make it a key plot point that a character must perform a striptease in order to lure the killer, you really need to have room for those money shots. (Given it’s been bumped up to a 15 here in the UK, I suspect many viewers will be left feeling a bit short-changed.)
But an even bigger tonal issue is the at times very awkward balance between comedy and tragedy. The real heart of the film is the reunion of Max and her mother in the form of Camp Bloodbath character Amanda, who is of course utterly unaware of being a real person or having a daughter. This in part brings echoes of Back To The Future, with Max attempting to play along but inadvertently taking on a reversed parental role, but there’s a particularly raw edge here given the real world loss of Max’s mother – and the fact that, within the story world of Camp Bloodbath, Amanda is intended to die. This does lead to some very bold and powerfully emotional sequences, almost on a par with the more tragic moments in Shaun of the Dead (and I doubt I’ll ever hear Bette Davis Eyes quite the same way again) – but this time around, these scenes sit rather uncomfortably amongst the overly broad, often somewhat ham-fisted jokes. It doesn’t help that the film frequently seems to think it’s much funnier than it actually is: I’m thinking of Adam DeVine’s motor-mouthed jock and Angela Trimbur’s nympho exhibitionist in particular.
On top of which, The Final Girls tries and fails to give its supporting characters anything interesting to do, with an excess of subplots which are underdeveloped and ultimately go nowhere. In attempting to squeeze in comedy, drama, YA issues, to both homage and lampoon 80s slashers, and to dish it all up with a perhaps excessively flashy, computer-assisted visual style, director Todd Strauss-Schulson’s film is trying to squeeze way too much in, and despite flashes of brilliance we’re ultimately left with something that simply doesn’t gel. And it’s a crying shame, because with a little judicious reworking – and for the love of god, an R rating – we might very well have had a modern classic on our hands.
The Final Girls is out on DVD and Digital HD in the UK on 12th October, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. US readers can catch it in limited theatres and on VOD on October 9th from Stage 6 Films with Vertical Entertainment.