This article contains spoilers for the end of The Final Girls.
The slasher film genre has been extremely prolific for decades. This massive amount of content, especially in the "golden age" of slasher films in the 1970s and 1980s, has made some of the tropes of this genre extremely recognizable even to those who aren't devoted fans. Because of this, many more contemporary slasher or general horror films intentionally subvert, acknowledge, or deconstruct these tropes.
One example of a movie that has done this is 2015's The Final Girls. This horror-comedy film stars American Horror Story regular Taissa Farmiga as Max, a young woman who loses her mother in a car accident. Her mother, played by Malin Ackerman, was a struggling actress, mostly known for her role in the 1980s slasher film Camp Bloodbath, which has become a cult classic. Three years after the death of her mother, Max and her friends attend a screening of Camp Bloodbath, and things do not go as planned.
Max's friends include her best friend, Alia Shawkat's Gertie, and Gertie's stepbrother Duncan, played by Thomas Middleditch, who is a massive Camp Bloodbath fan. They are joined by Max's friend and love interest Chris, played by Alexander Ludwig, and his annoying ex-girlfriend Vicki, portrayed by The Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev. When a fire breaks out in the theatre, Max takes a machete to the screen so she and her friends can escape. They find themselves not behind the theatre, as expected, but instead inside the movie itself.
Once inside the movie, Duncan realizes that they have to play out the movie in order to get out. They try to just observe at first, with Max struggling to deal with the character her mother played, Nancy, who she has trouble differentiating from her actual mother. When Duncan gets slashed by the murderer, the group realizes they are not exempt from harm, and more actively work to keep themselves and everyone else safe.
The Final Girls acknowledges and deconstructs many classic slasher film tropes, especially once the main characters are inside the movie. The Camp Bloodbath characters, all camp counselors, are character archetypes typically found in slasher movies. Adam DeVine's Kurt is a womanizing bad boy, Tory N. Thompson's Blake is the cool guy, and Tina, played by Angela Trimbur, is a ditzy promiscuous girl. Nancy seems to be the most aware of her archetype, repeatedly referring to herself as just "the shy girl with the clipboard and the guitar." Each of these archetypes are played up and exaggerated for comedic effect, while at the same time feeling completely accurate to the genre.
The murderer of Camp Bloodbath, Billy Murphy, also plays into classic slasher tropes and archetypes. Billy was a former camper who was mercilessly bullied and then severely injured by counselors at the camp many years ago. He ended up with third-degree burns and scars all over his body, using a mask to cover the ones on his face, and now seeks revenge on the counselors. This trope of a killer being horribly mistreated and disfigured and seeking revenge is popular in the slasher genre. This is the character and trope probably played the most straightforward.
However, the timing of Billy's murders is not played straightforward at all. The Final Girls heavily lampshades the trope of characters being killed off during or after sex in slasher movies, with Duncan even saying, "Everyone who has sex in this movie dies, it's awesome." When used in classic slasher movies, the use of this trope implies that the characters are being punished for being sexually active. The movie uses this to both comedic and dramatic effect, with Max and her friends trying to prevent the camp counselors from having sex hoping it will prevent Billy's killing spree. Eventually, female characters taking their shirts off is used directly as bait for Billy, who shows up ready to kill every time it happens.
Of course, this leads to the major trope being deconstructed in this movie as named in its title, that of "the final girl." The final girl in Camp Bloodbath is meant to be Paula, played by Chloe Bridges. Paula is a cool, attractive, intelligent, and most importantly, a virgin. Since she doesn't have sex, she is the only one able to defeat Billy. This is not coincidental--when she kills Billy at Camp Bloodbath's end, Paula says, "You've messed with the wrong virgin." Her "purity" is what allows her to survive the movie. When Paula unexpectedly dies, the group decides they need to "nominate" a new final girl, and that it has to be a virgin, just like Paula was.
Vicki nominates herself first out of self-interest, even though she isn't a virgin, but eventually acknowledges she is aware of her own role in the film. "I'm the mean girl in the 80's horror movie, and we're past the mid point," she says later, "so I'd say that I overstayed my welcome." Max and Nancy are the only virgins left, and while Max desperately wants to keep Nancy alive because she is still associating her with her late mother, Nancy has become aware of her own archetype in the movie. "You're not the final girl Max, because of me, I'm supposed to die," she says, saying she is not meant to be the final girl, just "the shy girl with the clipboard and the guitar," sacrificing herself so that Max can defeat Billy and end the movie.
So at the end of The Final Girl, Max defeats Billy, beheading him in her own epic fight sequence. Max is all the things a final girl should be--she's smart, she never takes her clothes off during the movie, she is the last girl standing, and she is a virgin. However, where this becomes a deconstruction of this trope is that Max becomes the final girl intentionally. The other characters allow her to become the final girl not because The Final Girls is shaming or punishing anyone for having sex, but because of their awareness of the tropes of the film genre. When all other efforts to defeat Billy fail, the characters know this is the only way, because they are working within the rules of the slasher film.
The Final Girls is a slasher movie about slasher movie tropes, but it's also a movie about grief. Max only becomes the final girl through intent and the actions of her friends--including the actions of Nancy. Before Nancy sacrifices herself so that Max can be the final girl, she tells her "You have to let me go." Max tells her she loves her, because she never got to tell her mother that for the last time before she died. When Max defeats Billy, she is not only stepping up to the position of final girl and defeating the killer, but also defeating her own grief and starting to move forward. Max's victory over Billy feels not only as if it fits the rules of the genre, but earned, and satisfying.