Subverting the genre: The evolution of the final girl in the halloween franchise

Abstract

The Halloween films (1978-2022) constitute one of the most renowned and quintessential horror franchises. The first film of the franchise Halloween (Carpenter, 1978), influenced by Black Christmas (Clark, 1974) and Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960), is not only a worldwide critical and commercial success but also holds a prominent place in the horror subgenre slasher films. Halloween is followed by various sequels and remakes, which create different timelines and continuities within the franchise throughout its 44 years. That said, this chapter is focused on the first installment of the franchise, Carpenter's Halloween, and the Blumhouse Trilogy, including Halloween (Green, 2018), Halloween Kills (Green, 2021), and Halloween Ends (Green, 2022), which act as a sequel to the original film of 1978 and disregards all the other subsequent films. These four films are chosen in this study because they perfectly showcase the archetype of the Final Girl as well as the archetype's evolution from 1978 to 2022, demonstrated through the case study of the protagonist Laurie Strode played by Jamie Lee Curtis. The representation of the Final Girl has evolved from the first film, which portrays its heroine as a teenage babysitter, the victim of the serial killer Michael Myers, to the trilogy that demonstrates a determined matriarch intent on protecting her family, facing and killing her nemesis, who has become an equal of the villain Michael Myers and a contender, powerful enough to finally vanquish him for good. In order to investigate the evolution of the archetype and the transformation of gender representation, this chapter examines the eras in which the films were produced (the original film was released during the second-wave feminism and the trilogy was released within the fourth-wave feminism). Moreover, the iconography of the films is analyzed and compared to reveal the heroine's journey and showcase her transformation clearly by demonstrating how Laurie Strode became the equal and competitor of the pure evil, Michael Myers. © 2024 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.