With spooky season now fully upon us, what better time to look back over the greatest ‘Final Girls’ in cinema? The term is used in horror cinema to describe the trope of a young (at least at first) woman, and generally innocent character who, through hook or crook, makes it out of the movie alive. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her 1992 book, Men, Women and Chain Saws and has since made its way into the horror lexicon.
After much soul searching and consternation, I’ve decided to rank them here by a mix of cultural impact and longevity—both on and off the screen. Read on to discover more about each one (there are naturally some spoilers ahead) and use the guide below to find out which ones to watch from each of their various catalogues—and, of course, to find them on services like AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
Honourable Mention: Carrie - Carrie (1976)
We’ll start with a slight cheat: of course, there’s a suggestion that Carrie rises from the grave at the end of Brian DePalma’s eerie 1976 masterpiece, but the dreamlike nature of that coda (which the director shot night for day, and in reverse, just to make it look weird) leaves it a little unclear if Sissy Spacek’s heroine actually survives.
Regardless, Carrie certainly outlives most of the other characters in the movie, so she more than deserves a mention here. The film is for fans of DePalma’s early stuff or other stylish horror from that era—think Body Double or Dressed to Kill, but with a bit of Suspiria on top.
9. Sam & Tara Carpenter - Scream (2022-2023)
After two successful legacy sequels, Scream and Scream VI, it seemed like Sam and Tara Carpenter (played by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, respectively) were in it for the long haul. Sadly, due to some questionable decisions by the studio, the actresses won’t be returning for next year’s Scream 7. Our loss.
Whatever happens in the future, however, Ortega and Barrera certainly left their mark on the franchise—surviving two rounds of Ghostfaces and uncovering some uncomfortable family secrets along the way. Scream (or Scream 5, if you prefer) is the best of the two—naturally for fans of Ortega – but also for anyone who enjoyed Mikey Madison’s Oscar-winning turn in Anora and wants to see the performance that landed her that role.
8. Sienna Shaw & Victoria Heyes - Terrifier (2016-2024)
When Terrifier was released, shocking audiences on the horror festival circuit before becoming a genuine cult sensation and crossover hit, it wasn’t exactly clear if Damien Leone’s sadistic series would be capable of letting anyone survive. As it turned out, Terrifier now has two final girls… sort of.
Victoria Heyes only just survives Art’s rampage in the first movie, but the experience leaves her so disfigured and psychologically deranged that she ends up returning in the second and third movies as a killer as well—the Harley Quinn to his Joker, or something like that. Sienna Shaw, on the other hand, has now survived the last two movies and looks more likely to be the standard Final Girl of the series going forward.
If you’ve yet to see the Terrifier movies, be warned: they are not for the faint of heart. But if you like your gore a little on the extreme side (think Martyrs, Bone Tomahawk), you might be just the kind of sicko who’ll enjoy it.
7. Julie Hames - I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997-2025)
Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie Hames probably wouldn’t have made it this high on the list without her reappearance in the (IMO quite underrated) I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel last year—but we are in the longevity business here, and 28 years is nothing to be sniffed at.
The movie, like its predecessors, didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, but if you appreciated the first two movies (hot young people, seaside locations, surprisingly decent camera work, a weirdly unimaginative killer), it kinda ticked all the boxes. Think of a less creative Scream and you’ll know where to set your expectation levels.
6. Maxine Minx - X (2022-2024)
Mia Goth’s iconic performances in Ty West’s X trilogy feel so interconnected, you almost forget that Maxine Minx doesn’t appear in the second instalment. Without question, though, the character remains the stylish horror franchise’s Final Girl and, alongside Art, has been one of the greatest additions to the horror canon in recent years.
I’d highly recommend all three of these movies. X if you like classic exploitation like Texas Chain Saw Massacre; MaXXXine, if you like the Hollywood vibes of Scream 3. However, if you can only see one, it’s just gotta be Pearl—a dazzling combination of modern horror and classic Hollywood that kinda looks like what would happen if Carrie and The Wizard of Oz had a baby.
5. Nancy Thomson - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984-1994)
The original A Nightmare on Elm Street was such an enormous success that you can hardly blame New Line Cinema for wanting to cash in on the franchise—and fast. Unfortunately for fans, that also meant a steep drop in quality in later instalments. That said, if you want to know which ones to check out, there’s a simple way to do so: just look for Wes Craven’s name in the credits.
Those titles also happen to be the only movies in the franchise to feature the series’ true Final Girl, Nancy Thompson: you can find her in the original, of course, and in Craven’s remarkable 1994, proto-Scream experiment, New Nightmare, but the real ones know that the series peaked with 1987’s Dream Warriors—an ideal recommendation for fans of ‘80s aesthetics (think Joe Dante) and inventive kills (think Cabin in the Woods).
4. Sally Hardesty - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
The best thing a Final Girl can do is reappear. That said, we must make an exception for Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is a character that basically helped invent the idea. No visual lexicon of the Final Girl would be complete without the immortal image of her soaked in blood at the film’s close, laughing maniacally in the back of a pickup truck as it pulls away, just in time to save her from the swing of Leatherface’s chainsaw (as it is famously not spelt in the title).
Needless to say, Tobe Hooper’s movie is a masterpiece that I can’t recommend highly enough, especially for fans of exploitation movies like Last House on the Left, but also fans of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The legendary director is said to have considered it one of his favourite movies of all time.
3. Sydney Prescott & Gale Weathers - Scream (1996-2026)
Like the more recent Carpenter sisters (a nod to John that I’ve only just noticed), Scream has always been the franchise that gave you two Final Girls instead of one. Scream 7’s release in early 2026 marks 30 years since Neve Campbell’s Sydney and Courtney Cox’s Gale Weathers first appeared on screen, ducking and diving their way around Ghostface’s hunting knife and somehow always living to tell the tale.
Since then, the duo have appeared together in all but one of the franchise’s instalments, with Gale being the only character to have appeared in all. Choosing which to watch from the series is tricky: you really can’t go wrong with 1 and 2, the genius meta horror and its own meta sequel, but make sure not to sleep on 3—its Hollywood studio setting is a total blast, especially for fans of Craven’s New Nightmare.
2. Ellen Ripley - Alien (1979-1997)
As the kind of true story famously goes, the character of Ripley was originally intended to be a man. Lucky for us, a then-unknown Sigourney Weaver tried out for the part, and the rest is history. The character made it through Ridley Scott’s original Alien by the skin of her teeth but became a fully fledged action heroine in the mother v mother showdown at the climax of James Cameron’s sequel.
Ripley would eventually appear in various ways over four Alien movies (and are we really ruling out a return at some point?), but if I had to choose one to take to the grave, it would have to be Cameron’s—a perfect movie if ever there was one, especially for anyone who likes the director’s first two Terminator movies.
1. Laurie Strode - Halloween (1978-2022)
This was a tough, tough call. There frankly aren’t as many great movies in the Halloween franchise as some other series on this list, but seven appearances and 44 years are the kind of numbers we just can’t ignore. Laurie also gets bonus points for being played by Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of Janet Leigh, an actress whose performance in Psycho helped to coin the term “scream queen”.
If you can only see one, it’s gotta be the John Carpenter original, a movie that basically invented the slasher genre. However, if you’re feeling a bit adventurous, why not give Tommy Lee Wallace’s absolutely bonkers Halloween III: Season of the Witch a try? The movie features neither Curtis nor Michael Myers, but it does have androids and haunted masks and some batshit connection to Stonehenge. Writing for the New York Times in 1982, the late Vincent Canby noted, “Halloween III manages the not easy feat of being anti-children, anti-capitalism, anti-television and anti-Irish all at the same time.” As an Irish person, I politely disagree.
