Final Girls Week: Sidney Prescott, Scream
The ’70s and ’80s saw the rise of gore-filled slasher films, most of which involved a group of bright-eyed teens finding themselves the prey of some sort of a disguised psychopath. In almost all of these films there is a female character who holds the typical characteristics of being pure and innocent, appealing to the mostly young, male audience, but over the duration of the film will “slowly transform into a monster herself to defeat the murderer”, in the words of ‘Film School Rejects’. The young woman who was once oblivious to the terrors that exist in the world has now been thrown into the deep end and will have to put herself through hell, doing whatever she has to in order to survive. This cliché was once a simple concept and used only as a way to appeal to the audience, whereas over time the ‘final girl’ has developed into something more complex, used to develop the story and empower women through showing their heroism in overcoming terrifying situations. One film that demonstrates this shift is ‘Scream’, the classic 90’s horror that revitalised the genre.
On the surface, the story of Scream is simply about a masked killer terrorising a town and the characters trying to work out who is under the mask. However, what the story is really about is the character of Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, coming to terms with her Mother’s brutal murder and building the courage to take down the same killer. Little White Lies describes the film as occupying “a uniquely female space” through its focus on how the female protagonist deals with her situation. For many gore-lovers, these deeper meanings would be ignored, but it can’t be ignored how much of the film is about more than just the grizzly ways in which the characters die.
Sidney’s mother was assumed to be having an affair before her death, which then became public knowledge. As a result of this, Sidney struggles with her own sexual identity but does decide to have sex with her boyfriend near the third act of the film, going against the famous ‘rules of surviving a horror film’ that are told to us within the film by cinephile Randy. The rules include never drinking alcohol or taking drugs, never saying the phrase “I’ll be right back” and never having sex. The fact that Sidney defies the last rule and still makes it to the end shows that Scream was not going to follow the crowd and instead let us know that the determining factor for her survival wasn’t whether or not she was a virgin, but was instead her own strength and courage.
Scream is a film that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The script is self-aware and avoids typical horror clichés whilst managing to remain scary, mysterious, and humorous along the way. It was a refreshing addition to the horror genre and still holds up to this day as one of the best. Craven manages to blend genres to make something typical of the ’90s: the fashion, the pop culture, the acknowledgements of previous slashers, as well as a timeless story of how a young woman comes to terms with her mother’s death and tries to avoid the same fate.
