Blended Humor and Horror in “The Final Girls”

Blended Humor and Horror in “The Final Girls”

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Introduction

Horror and humor, when observed on the surface, are opposing genres. Horror as a genre is developed to horrify and scare audiences, while humor amuses and ensures audiences laugh (Crowther, 2021). However, these two genres are considerably linked more than one can imagine through absurdity and high willingness by filmmakers to provide going over the top. The constant tension usually occurring in serious horror movies is exhausting. Thus, using humor to relieve tension can be an essential tool. Thus, films that typically blend horror and humor have emerged to be horror’s primary cannon. Rather than the films having possibly unintentional laughs in the various scenes, the films are a straight humorous take concerning the horror tropes. These films are referred to as horror-comedy, where they have become their own subgenre. “The Final Girls” is among the best horror-comedy with Todd Strauss-Schulson as the director, where the film does an outstanding job of blending humor and horror.

The unique concept in “The Final Girls” focuses on Max, whose mother passed away before being known by her daughter. She was mainly a scream queen in the 80s. The movie is a horror film that occurs in another horror film’s world. Various black-and-white flashbacks concerning teens that are over-sexualized are present in the movie. Also, there are flashbacks relating to individuals who mainly reference horror films’ rules. Looking at its official trailer, it portrays an exceptionally meta-horror movie, and this film pokes fun specifically at its genre; this appears unique. In addition, the film is self-aware, bright, funny, and scream-inducing. Usually, horror films are best when they turn out to be suspenseful and scary (Martin, 2019). They also perform if they are self-aware. In case they fail to cause utter terror to the audience, being concerned about the joke can assist them to be carried more seriously as a movie. “The Final Girls” excellently blends these different elements.

Horror

An emotional element is provided by a girl coming into contact with her deceased mother. The other cast offers an ideal balance of horror and humor. Duncan, who is nerdy, says, “Everyone who has sex in this movie dies” (Sweet Dreams Studios, 2021). Thus, this idea becomes the base of every joke in the film. The final girl, Paula, utters, “You just messed with the wrong virgin,” in the movie “Camp Bloodbath,” which is within the movie (Sweet Dreams Studios, 2021). The final girl is a virgin, unlike her licentious friends. The teen gang finally becomes aware that they are in a film; this is terrifying for geeky Duncan but rather heavy emotionally for Max. She views her dead mother again, who is in the flesh, although it is not her, indeed. Max also gets completely freaked out by her deceased mother being 20 years younger compared to her last memories of her. In addition, the teen gang can be assassinated by Billy Murphy, the film’s villain, and upon realizing they are not safe until they kill Billy to escape the film. Therefore, this shows the horrifying features of the film.

Humor

Moreover, “The Final Girls” has several humorous redeeming qualities. The present fake 1980s movie has B horror-quality jokes that make one cringe-laughing. For instance, Duncan says, “the writing is so bad” (Sweet Dreams Studios, 2021). Duncan explains the future occurrences in the movie. The film is also clever with meta-aspect, where its title cards are solid brick-concrete, and the flashback root stories change the setting in particular to black and white. Also, the horndog character Kurt turns out to be hilarious due to his exceeding-top masculinity and eagerness involving humping all the girls in sight. Adam DeVine plays this character Kurt entirely very well, dropping homophobic and casual anti-feminist remarks. Resident Slut, Tina is another exceptional and humorous character who requires duct-taped hands to survive by ensuring she does not undress and join any sexy misconduct. Tina is ridiculous and a riot.

Additionally, there is a hilarious strip show scene that results in one cackling where Nancy continuously refers to herself as the shy girl containing the guitar and the clipboard while Blake serves as an artsy alt boy who is token black. Ironically, the least memorable of the teen gang is Paula. Thus, these parody show portrays how film characters that are anticipated, conventional, and slasher look like; “The Final Girls” is a bit effective to that extent. However, following the virgin joke, all eyes induced hyper-meta comments after rolling, and the film fails to do something new for the genre.

Conclusion

Although humor and horror appear different on the surface, they are considerably linked more than one can imagine. “The Final Girls” excellently blends humor and horror and is among the best horror-comedy films. Looking at its official trailer, it portrays an exceptionally meta-horror movie, and this film pokes fun specifically at its genre; this appears unique. It has horrifying elements, such as Max getting freaked out by her deceased mother being 20 years younger compared to her last memories of her. There are also humorous features where Duncan utters that every individual involved in sex dies; this becomes the basis of every joke in the film. Therefore, “The Final Girls” effectively portrays the connection between horror and humor.

References

Crowther, S. (2021). Bloody Disgusting! Abjection, Excess & Absurdity: The Carnivalesque Cohesion Between Horror & Comedy in Film & Television.

Martin, G. N. (2019). (Why) do you like scary movies? A review of the empirical research on psychological responses to horror films. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 2298.

Sweet Dreams Studios. (2021). FINAL GIRL – Full Film. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKeTMmLOWck