Max is a high school senior who is mysteriously transported with her friends into a 1980s horror film that starred Max’s celebrated scream queen mother. Trapped inside the movie, Max finds herself reunited with her mom, who she lost in real life. Together with Max’s friends, they must fend off the camp counsellors’ raging hormones, battle a deranged machete-wielding killer and find a way to escape the movie and make it back home.
Why we’re looking forward to this: Originality is hard to find when it comes to horror films, but The Final Girls has seemingly managed to take that most cliched of scenarios, the summer camp full of stereotypical teens stalked by a psychopathic slasher, and given it a whole new twist by having a group of teens from the real world somehow end up in the fictional movie with one of their mothers.
The most interesting thing about the film is that we’re not sure if this is supposed to be a comedy, or a serious movie, but either way it has the potential to be something that we’ve certainly never seen before and that’s got to be a good thing.
The clip we’ve seen looks promising, with the 1980s camp counsellors as camp as you’d expect them to be and our displaced modern day cast seemingly taking the situation seriously, and while we’re able to laugh at the slasher stereotypes them from our perspective here in the future, back when the likes of Friday The 13th came out these very same characters were actually being played straight, so there’s ample opportunity for The Final Girls to wrong foot into thinking we’re watching a comedy before blindsiding us with some really nasty stuff.
Starring Taissa Farmiga (American Horror Story), Malin Akerman (WATCHMEN), Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), Adam DeVine (Workaholics), Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development), Alexander Ludwig (THE HUNGER GAMES), and Nina Dobrev (The Vampire Diaries), The Final Girls is possibly the most interesting new film we’ve come across so far this year.
The Final Girls is hitting theaters next month and VOD shortly thereafter.
RICHARD COSGROVE
