The final girl is a trope in horror films. It refers to the last girl(s) or woman alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in many films, including Psycho, Voices of Desire, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Alien, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her article "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film" (1987). Clover suggested that in these films, the viewer began by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experienced a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.
Rolfe Kanefsky is an American film writer/director who specializes in horror films.
After Dark Horrorfest was an annual horror film festival featuring eight independent horror movies, sometimes with "secret" bonus films, all distributed by After Dark Films in the USA. The first HorrorFest was held in 2006.
Demonic Toys is a 1992 American direct-to-video horror comedy film produced by Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment and directed by Peter Manoogian. The film centers on a police officer who is terrorized by the title characters after a botched arrest. Like many other Full Moon releases, Demonic Toys never had a theatrical release and went straight-to-video in 1992. In the United States, the film was given an "R" rating for violence, language, and brief nudity. The franchise was created by Charles Band.
Goodbye Lover is a 1998 neo-noir comedy film about a murder plot surrounding an alcoholic advertising agency worker and his adulterous wife. The film was directed by Roland Joffé, and stars Patricia Arquette, Dermot Mulroney, Don Johnson, Ellen DeGeneres and Mary-Louise Parker. The original script was written by Ron Peer; subsequent drafts were written by Robert Pucci, then Buck Henry.
The Lodger is a 2009 mystery/thriller film directed by David Ondaatje and starring Alfred Molina, Hope Davis and Simon Baker. It is based on the 1913 novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, filmed previously by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927, by Maurice Elvey in 1932, by John Brahm in 1944, and as Man in the Attic (1953) directed by Hugo Fregonese.
Mahakaal, also known as Mahakaal: The Monster, is a 1994 Indian Hindi-language horror film directed by Shyam Ramsay and Tulsi Ramsay, known as the Ramsay Brothers. The film borrows numerous elements from the 1984 American film A Nightmare on Elm Street and its sequels, including its antagonist, Shakaal—who, like Elm Street's Freddy Krueger, is a razor-gloved killer who can murder people through their dreams.
Tetsuo: The Bullet Man is a 2009 Japanese cyberpunk body horror thriller film directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. The film is a standalone sequel to Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992), and follows a man who transforms into a rageful metallic being after his son is killed in a car crash. It stars Eric Bossick, Akiko Monō, Yuko Nakamura, Stephen Sarrazin, and Tsukamoto. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 5 September 2009, and released in Japan on 22 May 2010, by Asmik Ace Entertainment.
Shake, Rattle & Roll XI is a 2009 Filipino supernatural horror anthology film produced by Regal Entertainment, and the eleventh installment of the Shake, Rattle & Roll film series. It is directed by Rico Gutierrez, Don Michael Perez and Jessel Monteverde.
Paranormal Entity is a 2009 American supernatural horror film written, directed by and starring Shane Van Dyke and produced by The Asylum in 2009. It is one of many films dubbed as a "mockbuster", a movie designed to capitalize on the success of a more popular film. Paranormal Entity is a knockoff of the successful low-budget horror film Paranormal Activity. The film was followed by indirect sequels 8213: Gacy House in 2010, Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes in 2011, and 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck in 2012. The film's premise is that of a series of allegedly factual surveillance videos documenting the downward spiral and eventual supernatural rape and murder of a woman named Samantha Finley.
Terror Stories is a 2012 terror omnibus film made up of four short films by five South Korean directors.
Tales of Halloween is a 2015 American comedy horror anthology film consisting of ten interlocking segments, each revolving around the holiday indicated by the title. Segments were directed by Neil Marshall, Darren Lynn Bousman, Axelle Carolyn, Lucky McKee, Andrew Kasch, Paul Solet, John Skipp, Adam Gierasch, Jace Anderson, Mike Mendez, Ryan Schifrin, and Dave Parker.
Kill or Be Killed is a 2015 American Western film written and directed by Duane Graves and Justin Meeks. Meeks stars as a notorious Texas criminal whose gang is slowly picked off one-by-one by an unknown killer. It premiered at the ninth Dallas International Film Festival and was released in the US on March 1, 2016.
XX is a 2017 American horror anthology film directed by Jovanka Vuckovic, Annie Clark, Roxanne Benjamin, and Karyn Kusama. It stars Natalie Brown, Melanie Lynskey, Breeda Wool, and Christina Kirk. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2017, and was released in the United States in select theaters and through video on demand on February 17, 2017, by Magnet Releasing.
The Evil Within is a 2017 American horror film written and directed by Andrew Getty and starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Dina Meyer, Frederick Koehler, and Michael Berryman. It was originally titled The Storyteller. The film's conception and development were a personal project of Getty's, who largely self-financed it at an estimated cost of $4–6 million; production took fifteen years to complete. Following Getty's death in 2015, editing for the film was completed by producer Michael Luceri.
Marrowbone is a 2017 English-language Spanish psychological horror mystery drama film written and directed by Sergio G. Sánchez, and starring George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Mia Goth, and Matthew Stagg. The film tells the story of the titular Marrowbone siblings, who relocate from England to their mother's ancestral estate in Maine, where they are faced by a sinister presence at home. Marrowbone was screened in the Special Presentations section at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and released in Spain on 27 October 2017 by Universal Pictures.
Mara is a 2018 American supernatural horror film directed by Clive Tonge in his feature-length debut and written by Jonathan Frank. The film stars Olga Kurylenko as criminal psychologist Kate Fuller, who investigates the murder of a man and is haunted by the eponymous demon who kills people in their sleep. The film also stars Craig Conway. Tonge and Frank based the film's story on conditions and mythology surrounding both sleep paralysis and Brugada syndrome. The film was released by Saban Films on September 7, 2018. It received negative reviews from critics and was a box office bomb.
Hit Man is a 2023 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the screenplay with Glen Powell. The film stars Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, and Sanjay Rao. It follows an undercover New Orleans police contractor who poses as a reliable hitman as he tries to save a woman in need. The basic premise was based on the true story of a college professor who worked for the Houston police in the late 1980s and 1990s as a fake hitman, as described in a 2001 magazine article by Skip Hollandsworth.
