High schooler Max Cartwright (Taissa Farmiga; Vera's younger sister) is driving home with her mother Amanda (Malin Akerman), a former scream queen who's just failed an audition, when they have a car crash and Amanda is killed. Three years later to the day, Max reluctantly attends a special screening of her mother's crowning glory, the 1986 (fictional) slasher movie Camp Bloodbath and its sequel, with her friends Gertie (Alia Shawcat) and Chris (Alexander Ludwig), with her horror movie addict stepbrother Duncan (Thomas Middleditch) and, to Max's irritation, his girlfriend and Max's estranged former best friend Vicki (Nina Dobrev) also there. But things soon get a whole lot worse when, during the film, the cinema catches fire. Since there's no other escape, Max cuts her way through the screen and now her and the others all literally enter Camp Bloodbath. From here, they have to work with all the film's characters, including her mum's character Nancy and the token comic relief jock Kurt (Adam DeVine), in order to survive.
The Final Girls is a textbook example of how to flawlessly parody the horror genre, particularly the slasher subgenre. Instead of being a Scary Movie clone, it's more like Groundhog Day meets The Evil Dead in how our heroes have to go back and forth each time the movie-within-a-movie ends and re-starts, before they finally realise how to kill the villain, Billy Murphy (Daniel Norris). This concept is also filled with relatable character dynamics, especially that of Amanda/Nancy and Max, and loads of witty in-jokes and intertextual references. Director Todd Strauss-Schulson and writers M. A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller all show panache and unashamed restraint as they traverse this very gruesome and blackly comic territory, and I found the result ferociously entertaining and perhaps more charming than I should have. But anyway, The Final Girls is a top-drawer horror spoof, with an excellent soundtrack to boot.
No comments:
Post a Comment