As a genre, horror is so entertainingly malleable that filmmakers and storytellers have been able to pair the genre with different, almost polar opposite genres. The most popular subgenre in this category has to be the horror-comedy, making light of some of the most messed-up, horrific ideas ever put to screen. Even this subgenre is incredibly diverse and open to all audiences. Just last year, fans saw the return of the Ghost with the Most in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a sequel to the 1988 classic. Other slasher comedies include Renfield, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Nic Cage's Willy's Wonderland, Abigail and M3GAN. This year also saw its fair share of successful horror comedies with The Monkey and Heart Eyes. Particularly with Heart Eyes, audiences got to see a massive combination of genres with horror, comedy and romance. That movie somewhat follows a recent trend started in the horror genre thanks to the movie The Final Girls.
The Final Girls was a 2015 horror comedy that turned the genre on its head. Like a classic slasher movie with a twist, the film sees a group of teens watch a classic scary movie à la Friday the 13th. However, during a freak fire in their theater, they escape through the movie screen, accidentally sending themselves into the scary movie itself. Now, knowing how the horror genre goes and the story of the movie, the teens work with the characters to try to survive the night with a deadly serial killer. It's a very entertaining movie with a lot of great jokes and great scares. However, the most significant part of the movie is its meta commentary on the genre.
The Final Girls Kicks Off a New Horror Movie Trend
The Meta Horror Movie Kicked off This New Trend
The Final Girls stars a massive cast of Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman, Nina Dobrev, Alexander Ludwig, Alia Shawkat, Adam Devine, Angela Trimbur and more. The title of the movie alone tells the audience the kind of movie it is. A final girl in a horror movie is a term often used to describe the character who is last left alive, and will either escape the monster or the killer in the movie or kill them. The Final Girls not only uses that trope to their advantage in making a meta and surprising new horror comedy, but also uses several other classic horror movie tropes in order to keep things interesting.
While The Final Girls hasn't cemented its legacy as a fan-favorite horror film as of yet, it's still much appreciated for somewhat kicking off a trend that other movies have leaned into more. While The Final Girls was a borderline parody of the slasher genre, other studios and filmmakers have asked themselves, "What other movies could be turned into horror comedies?"
Related
10 Best Final Girls In Iconic Horror Movies
Although the final girl trope has been around for a while in iconic horror movies, the best survivors are iconic, fearless, and determined.
Posts
The first movie to be somewhat inspired by the meta storytelling of The Final Girls was Happy Death Day. While the title might sound like a B-movie birthday-related slasher, Happy Death Day is far from that. Starring Jessica Rothe, the film centers around mean sorority college student Tree Gelbman on her birthday. She begins the day waking up with a hangover from an all-night rager, and ends the day being hunted by a cartoon baby-masked serial killer.
However, instead of dying like she initially considered, she wakes back up in the bed she started the day in. Tree quickly realizes that over and over again, she will be killed by this terrifying serial killer in a time loop. If this story sounds familiar, it's because it's a horror spin on the famous 1993 Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day.
Director Christopher Landon, who'd just recently debuted his new thriller film Drop, created Happy Death Day with Groundhog Day in mind, as well as other horror influences like Scream and Halloween, and '80s comedy influences like Back to the Future and Sixteen Candles. Landon is no stranger to horror-comedies, as he was also the director of the underrated 2015 Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.
While Groundhog Day isn't technically the first movie to feature a main character repeating the same day in a time loop, it is the most popular. Plenty of other movies have followed in that film's legacy, such as Edge of Tomorrow, Looper and Palm Springs. Happy Death Day follows in that film's footsteps, as well as the inspired horror-comedy route that The Final Girls took. The film was so successful that Landon created a sequel called Happy Death Day 2U, with a third movie moving forward. While a horror version of Groundhog Day might sound wild to audiences, that's nothing compared to the movies that followed.
Back to the Future, Freaky Friday and More Get Terrifying
Classic Movies Are Turned Into Successful Horror Stories
Close
Director Christopher Landon took a step away from Happy Death Day after completing the sequel and focused his creative attention on a completely different horror-comedy inspired by a completely different classic film. Freaky, starring Kathryn Newton, is the story of high school student Millie being hunted down by a terrifying serial killer using a knife that would magically cause them to switch bodies. Now, Millie is in the body of the killer, and she and her friends must stop the killer, now in Millie, before they go on another murder spree and before they're swapped bodies forever.
If this premise also sounds similar, that's because it's a horror-comedy version of the classic movie Freaky Friday. There are several versions of that film that audiences know and love, with the most popular being in 2003 from Disney, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. As a matter of fact, that film is set to get a sequel this year. Freaky was positively received and praised for its innovative and creative premise inspired by the classic movies, and audiences still appreciate Kathryn Newton's standout performance to this day.
Related
2025's Best Slasher With an 80% RT Score Makes Up For Poor Theatrical Run By Becoming A Streaming Hit
Despite some good reviews, the slasher film failed to impress at the box office.
Posts
Now that a formula has been properly developed, thanks to movies like Freaky, Happy Death Day and even The Final Girls, movies like Totally Killer and Time Cut were able to thrive. Totally Killer was directed by Nahnatchka Khan and starred Kiernan Shipka and Olivia Holt. After 35 years of being missing, the Sweet Sixteen Killer returns to murder Jamie's mom. Running away, Jamie escapes into a time-traveling photo booth, which takes her back to when her mother was in high school in the 1980s. Now, Jamie must find a way to get back to the future and stop the Sweet Sixteen Killer in the past so that they don't murder Jamie's mother in the present.
Time Cut shares a very similar premise, but instead of going back to the '80s, the main character goes back to the early 2000s to save her sister from being murdered by a masked killer. Both films take a lot of inspiration from the masterpiece series Back to the Future.
A notable mention in this trend is a movie called It's A Wonderful Knife, clearly in reference to the Christmas classic It's A Wonderful Life. This movie features Justin Long as a brightly smiling, evil mayor whose masked serial killing plans are thwarted by a local teenager. However, instead of this main character questioning whether or not it'd be better if she existed in the first place and learning that she should, she finds herself in a world where a masked serial killer is still getting away with crimes as if she never existed, meaning she couldn't have stopped him. It's a smart twist on the classic storyand another horror-comedy twist that follows the trend that The Final Girls and Happy Death Day started.
Horror Spins Are Here to Stay
The Horror Genre Can Be Perfectly Twisted Into Anything Today
The Final Girls was not the first horror-comedy to be a meta twist on the genre. In fact, audiences can cite movies like The Cabin in the Woods, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and even the entire Scream franchise. However, Happy Death Day continued this meta-horror-comedy trend with a movie that was hilarious and perfectly satirized the classic Groundhog Day movie. More movies follow in their footsteps, kicking off a new trend of horror movies retelling classic comedies with a twisted twist.
Related
10 Underrated Slasher Films Perfect for Scream Fans
Scream is an iconic slasher franchise, and there are even more movies that continue the feelings the hit movie evokes.
Posts
This trend seems to be continuing as Happy Death Day 3 is set to make its grand return. Now, movies like In A Violent Nature can be just as meta as The Final Girls, but maintain their horrifying and thrilling storytelling. Audiences have known about this trend for a while, as many of these movies don't exactly hide their inspirations, but fans want to see more movies like this in the future. Whether satirizing classic comedy movies like Porky's, Mrs. Doubtfire, Weekend at Bernie's or Home Alone will become a stronger trend, or if there are simply more meta horror movies being made, audiences can't wait to see what's next.
The Final Girls
PG-13
Horror
Comedy
Release Date October 9, 2015
Runtime 88 minutes
Cast
Nina Dobrev
Taissa Farmiga
Alexander Ludwig
Malin Akerman
Powered by Expand Collapse