Final Girl

Final Girl is basically putting the Hit-Girl trope to the slasher genre, which can be a pretty cool concept. The film's style is some sort of a fancy old-school mystery film, highlighting shadows and silhouettes through creaking walls, cafeterias and streets. Visually appealing stuff, rather enjoyed for being effectively overly campy for its low budget. But the story itself is just downright silly and even worse, meaningless. The movie sets up a little girl training to beat up dangerous men, but it instead lead us to a number of strange events, which results to such polarizing schlock.

Even for its shoddiness, the weird style could still be admired for being way too campy. The story centers on a secret organization that hires vigilantes, and everything else about them is a huge mystery. We only see two characters in their dark shadowy headquarters; it's either for the sake of being extremely minimal, or just really underdeveloped. But the important thing is, they're hiring a young girl to fight off their targets. In spite of training and even raising her in this cold- blooded environment, the main character, Veronica, still doesn't seem like she's as strong or as unfeeling as she is supposed to be. It makes everyone wonder what exactly did she train throughout her childhood. She's not given much of an arc either. The film just presumes that she is not competent enough at some points. It can be a useful good to bring some suspense, but instead, she is given an incredible dose of deus ex machina in this "daring mission" that would easily take down her targets.

While it makes the whole mission a lot weirder, all we see is just some amateurish looking acid trip that is supposed to represent their fear, but looks more totally random than disturbing. The fighting is hidden behind the vague shadows and the on screen blood is very reserved. All the slasher/gory fun is replaced with artsy pretentiousness. And for some reason, that can also be one of the benefits of the film. In a typical mindset, the experience may just be some terribly shot mindless violence on screen. Not saying that this approach is anything fresh or superior at all, it's just pretty rare that it manages to do something a little different. It brings some tongue-in-cheek characters, blanketing their shadows into some exteriors with lighting fetishes (the headlights of the gang's car is super strong enough to shine the entire forest). The movie brings some flavor, but it didn't gloss over enough about the fact how pointless this story all was. The acting is fine, they're basically as campy as the cinematography.

Final Girl is a cool looking film with a pretty ridiculous story that lacks severe subtext. The movie may have painted a lot of interesting shadows through its darkness which makes it effectively campy as hell, add some symmetry that somewhat turn buildings into dollhouses, make headlights spotlighting every hallucination, and characters chew the scenery because it's more intimidating that way, but then it's all just pretty images. It all lacks grotesque and gore, or even more important: meaning. While it's reasonably to get fascinated by a typical B-movie's decision have such obsession with silhouettes and lights, the story just doesn't make any sense in the end.

This is actually a good movie to watch when your just alone and want to see something by yourself............................................. I see a lot of reviews on this movie talking bad about it .. Some say it ruined a date or wasn't entertaining, that makes me believe those comments come from people who always expect a movie to have nudes and sexy scenes to help them get laid or from kids who just like cool Michael Bay explosions.............................................. This is a slow paced movie and its just what it was intended to be, like for example "sin city" in movies like that you cant expect total realism, there's some art in it. its not great but not bad too...... the end.

Final Girl had an awesome setup, right through Truth or Dare, and an insanely disappointing, anti-climactic "hunt".

I thought this movie was fairly unusual (although the more recent Ready or Not explores similar ground). Combining horror, film noir, revenge, and an assasin, is not something I see every day. (Well, a horror premise, not so much in execution).

This was cool and stylish, with great cinematography. Not sure what decade it was supposed to be. I thought the 50's, but they were playing surf music in the car! Then again, I think they were driving a 60's car.

I did like Abigail Breslin as the kick-ass assasin, although she could've trained harder. A lot of the action was unconvincing. I'm sure the director should be blamed there, too. And, someone was a wrestling fan. FAR too many chokeholds. I'd much rather see Veronica kick those psychopath's asses.

Speaking of which, the final hunt. This is where you go overboard in a revenge flick. The kills, all of them, were downright weak. I think if this movie had gruesome kills (as well as better fighting), it could potentially be a cult movie in the future. As it stands, opportunity squandered.

This movie had quite a lot of familiar names for me and with all those names should have been better. It gets let down by the script and the casting of the lead Abigail Breslin.

The rest of the actors do on the whole a pretty good job and overlooking Abigail Breslin's obvious miscasting this was an entertaining movie to watch. Just don't expect too much going in.

Wes Bentley, Cameron Bright, Alexander Ludwig and Francesca Eastwood are all actors I have seen before and their performances while good are let down by the unpolished script dialogue.

The movie is quite short at 78 minutes before the credits and the story is quite good, but for one glaring plot hole.

I gave this a 5.5 rounded up to a 6/10, which is better than the current average on here, it could have easily been an 8 with some work on the script and a more appropriate lead actress.

There's no real set up, the trailer basically summed up the movie. You understand the relationship between the characters but beyond that you don't know much about them. It's nicely executed and overall the movie is watchable but it feels more like a student project with an interesting cast than anything else.

Final Girl is not thrilling or frightening, particularly if you've seen the trailer. The good thing about it is the pace, it has a nice pace but not a very exciting one. So if you have 90 minutes to kill why not watch this movie.

@wornoutspines