The Final Girls is not your typical horror movie. It is full of classic horror movie tropes, cliches, and perfect moments.
The story follows Max Cartwright (American Horror Story’s Taissa Farmiga), a girl grieving the loss of her mother (Malin Akerman), who just so happened to be a famous actress of the slasher genre in the ‘80s. Max goes to see one of her mom’s films with a group of her friends (a motley crew made up of Vampire Diaries’ Nina Dobrev, Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat, The Hunger Games’ Alexander Ludwig and Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch), only to be trapped in a fiery theater, forced to exit through a slit in the theater screen. This somehow magically transports the gang into the real-time events of the movie, where the millennials are surrounded by soon-to-be murdered young people of the ‘80s, who have no idea they’re in a film and whose dialogue is cornier than that in a Babysitter’s Club novel.
The best part of the movie is that while it seems to make fun of all the cheesy aspects of the genre it also obeys them to a tee. However, it gets more meta the more you dig such as the casting. Ludwig being cast as one of the friends when he was in another meta/horror film earlier this year titled Final Girl.
The Final Girls premieres Oct. 9. You can watch the trailer below: