The Final Girls Review

 

Horror fans the slasher genre was at it's peak in the eighties and  the one setting that audiences seemed to love was the summer camp setting. Hell that setting was loved so much that you could honestly make a film just riffing on the tropes that you'd see in one of those movies and well one such movie actually exists and well I thought I thought i'd take a look at it mostly because I honestly haven't reviewed this movie and so here is my review of "The Final Girls" enjoy the review everyone.

The plot of the movie is five high school students find themselves trapped in a nineteen eighties camp slasher film called "Camp Bloodbath" and have to find away to survive the movie while also teaming up with the cast of the movie one of whom happens to be the dead mother of one of the friends. The idea of having kids transported into a summer camp horror movie is honestly an idea that I haven't seen done before and I don't know it's not been done since this movie since the jokes honestly do write themselves and the story itself is honestly really freaking well told in my honest opinion.

Starring in the film is Taissa Farmiga as Max Cartwright and Malin Åkerman as Nancy / Amanda Cartwright. Also starring in the film is Alexander Ludwig as Chris Briggs , Nina Dobrev as Vicki Summers , Alia Shawkat as Gertie Michaels , Thomas Middleditch as Duncan , Adam DeVine as Kurt , Angela Trimbur as Tina , Chloe Bridges as Paula , Tory N. Thompson as Blake and Daniel Norris as Billy Murphy.

The acting in this film is alot better then it really had any right to be I don't think anybody would have blamed these actors if they turned in a bad performance. However none of them do in fact alot of the performers in this film turn in funny performances which for a comedy is always a good thing and it helps that the script while there's not alot there in terms of character there's enough for the actors to make the script work.

This film takes shot at pretty much any slasher film that's set at a summer camp most notably Friday The 13th. Since how this film's killer came to be could be seen as a spoof of Jason Voorhees as well as the fact that the villain's main theme is a spoof of Jason's classic theme and the fact that the killer in this film like Jason wears a mask that looks like a hockey mask , I honestly like that they chose to borrow elements from the Friday The 13th movies and spoof them but at the same time I couldn't help but wonder why they didn't look at other slasher based summer camp films like how funny would it have been to see them try and spoof Sleepaway Camp for example.

Even tho this is a horror film to me the main focus of the film and it's story isn't about the friends trying to survive this movie but rather the fact that Max our man character trying to come to terms with the death of her mother. This to me is seen quite alot in the film since out of all the movie characters that she could form a bond with it's her mothers character that she goes to and when she feels stressed out it's her mother's character that comes to comfort her and hell they even have a heart to heart talk near the end of the movie thus making sure that Max has come to terms with the death of her mother but thats just what I think anyways.

There are alot of crazy cool camera movements in this movie which is honestly something that I wasn't expecting to see at all. However while those camera movements are indeed pretty cool nine times out of ten there not really showing stuff that's important to the story however there are times where the camera does pick up stuff that's important to the film and it's story like for example the theatre scene we see every part of what causes the fire which leads to our main cast breaking the screen and thus becoming trapped in the movie but then there are times like the car crash at the start where the camera rolls with the car and that's just not needed since we don't need to see that.

I had only one wish during this movie that's when the our main cast get trapped in the movie I wished that the film went all out to sell us that it's in a cheesy slasher summer camp movie. Like they could have changed the aspect ratio to the screen more like a VHS / TV and the video and sound quality should have been dropped those things to me would have not only been pretty funny but it also would have helped sell the fact that our main characters are in a cheesy as hell summer camp slasher film but nope they keep everything the same.

This film has a lot of commentary when it comes to slasher films set at a summer camp like the fact that the writing is very rarely that good or the fact that they feature the same sort of characters. It's that kind of attention to detail that makes me believe that writers M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller watched alot of these movies because they hit alot of the tropes that are found in those movies even like I said to using the same kind of characters in every film.

Now then since this is a horror comedy it only makes sense that I talk about the jokes that are in the film. Which yeah the jokes really aren't that funny at least in my opinion anyways which is a shame because alot of the actors are giving really funny performances the actress who plays Tina (Angela Trimbur) is honestly really funny but alot of the time the cast are given nothing funny to say which is something that you never want in a comedy.

Now it wouldn't be a slasher film without any kills and so it only makes sense that we now talk about those kills. Which yeah just like the jokes did nothing for me personally but here I feel that that makes some sense since the focus is more on spoofing the summer camp slasher film rather then being an actual slasher but with that being said it is still kind of a slasher film and so you'd expect the kills to be pretty decent which sadly they weren't or at least in my opinion they weren't anyways but her you guys might like the kills in this film.

Overall this is honestly a really entertaining film that doesn't take itself to seriously and yet still finds time to have those serious moments. I'm not going to lie and say that this is a perfect film because as i've said in this very review that couldn't be further from the truth with one issue being that the film doesn't take full advantage of it's cheesy 1980's summer camp slasher movie setting but even with all that mind the film gets a 7 out of 10 from me.

All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from Wikipedia , the official Friday The 13th film fandom wiki page and Google Images. Honestly given that I got more images from Google Images I kind of have no choice to recommend that you use Google Images if you want images from this film just because out of the three websites that I used Google Images is the only one with high definition images from this film and as always we end this review as we always do with our one true goddess Elvira wishing us all some very unpleasant dreams.