| The 1970’s and 80’s saw the rise of the slasher subgenre of horror films. Slashers follow a distinct outline, where a killer systematically murders their way through a group of young
adults. In turn, slashers gave birth to the trope the “Final Girl”: the woman who outlasts her peers who have been slaughtered on screen. This thesis will investigate how the Final Girl has evolved and left her original genre and has spread to other horror films. Using the lenses of critical race theory, intersectional feminism, and film studies, I will analyze three works, Halloween (1978), Scream (1996) and Midsommar (2019), to illustrate how the original trope reinforces and reflects changes to traditional gender roles and racial views as well as how the trope in its most recent form reveals how white femininity is a key feature of the Final Girl trope. |