Relevant Media Theories

The final girl is a horror film term used by Carol Clover in her book about gender in moren horror. It refers to the last woman alive to confront the killer and tell the story. The final girl is usually sexually unavailable and typicaly has a unisex name. The theory states that audience identification is vital for horror films. Women are more likely to support the film if they see a virginal female character who becomes masculine, herroic and powerful. Young male viewers are prepared to identify themselves with the female.  The theory has become very controversial because of its transexual suggestions and masochictic identification. However, It has ben observed in many popular horror films such as The Shining, Eden Lake, Halloween, A nightmare on Elm street, Allien and Scream.

While disgussing the theory we desiced that it would be good if we could incooperate the final girl theory in our film. We were almost finished with the treatment when we started thinking about what exactly is going to hapen in the forest- will troy die? what would happen to Ash? In the beggining we decided that kenny will kill both of them but then we decided we wanted our story to be complex and interesting. This  is why we decided that Ash will seduce Kenny and make him think she loved him. His vulnerability and desparate love towards Ash would make him kill Troy. As we were influenced by the final girl theory we desiced that Ash would be the one to survive after stabbing Kenny in the tent. This is linked to the final girl because we have a female character with a unisex name (Ashley) who uses a weapon to confront the killer and become the dominant figure in the movie.

Other theories we have looked at are the feminist film theory which is a film criticism of the way females ar eportrayed in horror films and the male gaze that predominates modern horror films.  The male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. The male gaze is linked to our film because although 2/3 of our characters are male, the final dopinant one is a girl which is portrayed in a heroic, confident way.