There are a huge number of horror movie franchises in cinema. Being generally cheaper to make than films in many other genres, it is easier for scary movies to garner a long list of sequels. The final girl trope in the horror genre refers to the last one left standing who manages to escape or defeat the villain.
In the early days of horror films, it was more common for the last remaining person to be female, and the trope has remained until this day as a staple of the genre. Unfortunately, many of them return in later editions of the franchise and aren’t as lucky as their first outing.
8 Alice Hardy – Friday The 13th
The Friday the 13th films went from Camp Crystal Lake to Manhattan to space, and yet Jason manages to keep surviving somehow. But they started with a twist ending and a final boss fight in Friday the 13th and the last survivor from Mrs. Voorhees' massacre was Alice Hardy.
Unfortunately, in Friday the 13th Part 2, the opening scene featured Alice’s death in her apartment months later. She opened her fridge to find the severed head of Pamela Voorhees and was struck with an ice pick, the unknown assailant turning out to be Pamela’s son Jason, and the rest, much like Alice, is history.
7 Lila Crane – Psycho
Psycho is an amazing horror film that still holds up today. After the famous shower killing scene halfway through Psycho, Lila Crane took her sister Marion’s place as the lead of the film and managed to survive Norman Bates and his "Mother." Twenty years later in Psycho 2, he was released from an institution and returned to society.
Lila hatched a plan in the sequel with her daughter Mary, attempting to drive Norman insane again, so he would be re-committed. Near the climax of the film, as Lila prepares to dress as Norman’s mother to trick him, she is murdered by Norman’s real mother, who was committing murders with the goal of protecting her son. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Lila and Mary ended up being blamed for all the killings in the film, allowing Norman to get away scot-free.
6 Clear Rivers – Final Destination
The Final Destination films aren’t always the best friend of logic, though they have left a mark on the horror genre that many films like Escape Room have tried to replicate. But Clear Rivers' reaction to seeing all of her friends killed by a mysterious force hunting down every survivor of a plane crash makes a lot of sense.
When the sequel picks up, Clear has checked herself into a psychiatric ward to hide from the pursuing force. The new group of victims turns to her for help, and Clear is eventually killed in an explosion, completing the work that Death started in the previous film. While she was able to help them first, fans considered the move of killing her to be more for shock value than a substantive addition to the sequel.
5 Reiko Asakawa – Ringu
The rise of Japanese horror in the 90s stemmed from films like Ju-On and Ringu. Journalist Reiko began by trying to uncover the mystery behind her niece’s death at the hands of a strange videotape and discovers the secret of the murderous ghost that crawls out of a TV to kill you a week after you watch the tape.
In the sequel Ring 2, Reiko dies suddenly while she and her son are running from the police, prompting her son to use his powers to murder one of the policemen. Certainly not the most fun ending on this list!
4 Nancy Thompson – A Nightmare On Elm Street
While it might feel as if some previous final girls on this list were tossed aside for shock value in the sequel, Nancy Thompson felt like a character with a much more fitting ending that came in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.
After surviving Freddy the first time around in A Nightmare On Elm Street, Nancy becomes an intern therapist at an institution for troubled youths, who turn out to be the last surviving children of the parents who had Freddy killed. In the film’s finale, Nancy is wounded but manages to stab Freddy with his own glove, stopping him and saving the others trapped in the dream before she dies.
The Nightmare On Elm Street films have always been considered an expert blending of supernatural and slasher, but the character of Nancy Thompson has never been successfully replaced or brought back since this death, which makes it strike all the harder on further viewings.
3 Laurie Strode – Halloween
Perhaps the most famous final girl of all time, Jamie Lee Curtis became a quintessential face of the horror genre after Laurie Strode survived the rampage of serial killer Michael Myers in 1978’s Halloween. While the most recent reboot of the series hasn’t killed Laurie, she still manages to have the distinction of being the only character on this list to have been killed not once, not twice, but three times!
When Jamie Lee decided not to return for Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, the filmmakers had her character killed in a car crash off-screen before the events of the film. After she returned in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, her death was supposedly faked, so she could escape Michael. However, she was controversially killed in the direct sequel Halloween: Resurrection.
In the Rob Zombie 2007 Halloween remake, Laurie is played by Scout Taylor-Compton, and in the 2009 Halloween 2 Director’s Cut, Laurie dies at the hands of the police in the climax of the film. Whether you think Laurie was wasted in Halloween Kills or not, at least she made it through that film alive!
2 Ellen Ripley – Alien
Sigourney Weaver's character Ripley is perhaps the only final girl in horror more recognizable than Laurie Strode. After surviving the rampage of a Xenomorph in Alien, and the rampage of many of the creatures in Aliens, she crash-landed on Fiorina “Fury” 161, a correctional facility in Alien 3.
While she manages to band together with the inmates and workers to destroy a Xenomorph that came with her, she discovers she has been impregnated by the embryo of an alien queen. Hoping to stop the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from creating biological weapons with the aliens, she chooses to die to destroy the embryo in the film’s climax. Whether Ripley will return with the upcoming Alien 5 is uncertain, but she will always remain one of the most famed final girls in cinema.
1 Sally Hardesty – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Sally Hardesty, due to the recent release of Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix, has managed to die twice in sequels to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. After not appearing in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, she was announced controversially to have died in private health care in the opening credits.
In a new continuity with the release of this year’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Sally has been working as a Texas Ranger for the past fifty years and has been searching for Leatherface. Unfortunately, Sally wasn’t played by original actress Marilyn Burns, as she died in 2014, but instead by Olwen Fouere. She is killed by Leatherface in the third act of the film, though not before firing a shot to save the new final girl, Lila, from the killer. Whether the new requel missed the point of the original is up for debate, but Sally's death was just another in a long line of painful moments for fans of final girls.