10) The Final Girls
The horror genre has always been rife for parody. Scream and Scary Movie built entire franchises around the predictability of slasher films and more recently, both The Cabin In The Woods and Tucker & Dale VS Evil both became fan favourites, so what could The Final Girls possibly add?
Genuine, heartfelt emotion, that’s what… oh, and dick jokes. A whole lot of dick jokes. But let’s stick with the emotion for now.
The Final Girls follows a girl called Max (Taissa Farmiga) whose mother (Malin Akerman) became famous as a scream queen in a classic slasher movie. On the anniversary of her mother’s death, Max attends a special screening of Camp Bloodbath and somehow becomes trapped within the movie itself. With her friends beside her, Max is forced to use her knowledge of slasher movies to defy the genres conventions and avoid death at the hands of the killer.
Horror enthusiasts will revel in the film’s unique approach to flashbacks and voiceovers, but what sets The Final Girls apart is the relationship between Max and the character who her mother plays in Camp Bloodbath. The bumbling scream queen Nancy may be world’s away from Max’s actual mother, but seeing her alive again in any form is still heart-wrenching, elevating the film far above its parody roots.