"The use of the "Final Girl" or the heroine is a common trend. All final girls share some common characteristics in that they are intelligent and resourceful. They are usually the first to sense trouble for example in Nightmare on Elm Street whilst Nancy's friends see the appearance of Freddy Krueger in their shared dreams as a freak happening Nancy sees it as an important omen."
"The climax of the film centers around the final girl and her attacker in a one on one affair. The Final Girl is often of blood relation to the killer for example Halloween which centers on the relationship between Michael Myers and his sister Laurie Strode and later episodes shift focus onto her grand children."
"Final Girls in slasher films are often virginal, whilst at least one of their friends are sexually active. In John Carpenters Halloween, generally assumed to be the first true slasher film Laurie Strode, a seventeen year old school girl and the Final Girl is only of the most notable examples of a virginal leading lady. She often makes disparaging remarks about her more experienced friends sexual appetites. Counter-types are used in A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 when Jesse finds himself unable to consummate his relationship with Lisa due to Freddy's interference however unusually for a slasher movie whilst the girl is eager, the boy is unable to go through with the act. In-fact the Nightmare series are remarkably free from sexual relationships."
"On the other hand there are a number of films where the Final Girl is
clearly not a virgin. The second installment of the Friday the 13th series conforms to this, the leading female character has a boyfriend who she sleeps with. Jamie Lee Curtis's character in Prom Night isn't a virgin either. By the nineties film makers were aware of the "virginal heroine" idea and frequently went out of their way to remove this tradition from their films for example in Kevin Williamson's I Know What You Did Last Summer the Final Girl engages in off screen sex in the firs
t 10 minutes. Scream also played with the idea although dismissed it later using Sidney's past emotional trauma preventing her sleeping with her boyfriend, a common device however she does lose her virginity half an hour before the end of the film before she triumphs over her tormentor. Cherry Falls exploits the traditional slasher films attitudes to sex and virginity, presenting a killer who only preys on the untouched and innocent therefore the Final Girl Jody is a virgin. The film does not contain the usual implication that sex is bad, it is hard not to sympathise with the teenagers frantically trying to have sex to prolong their lives."
t 10 minutes. Scream also played with the idea although dismissed it later using Sidney's past emotional trauma preventing her sleeping with her boyfriend, a common device however she does lose her virginity half an hour before the end of the film before she triumphs over her tormentor. Cherry Falls exploits the traditional slasher films attitudes to sex and virginity, presenting a killer who only preys on the untouched and innocent therefore the Final Girl Jody is a virgin. The film does not contain the usual implication that sex is bad, it is hard not to sympathise with the teenagers frantically trying to have sex to prolong their lives.""Whether or not the girl is sexually active, on most occasions she is accompanied by a boyfriend as this is the most common way of highlighting her sexual attitude. However unlike many earlier horror films 
the boyfriend character is rarely there to rescue his girlfriend and generally has one of two functions. He will either be slain trying to defend his girlfriend as in Halloween 4 or he will be incapacitated and useless as in Prom Night. At best the boyfriend is reduced to tagging along with the Final Girl who is nearly always left to save herself."
the boyfriend character is rarely there to rescue his girlfriend and generally has one of two functions. He will either be slain trying to defend his girlfriend as in Halloween 4 or he will be incapacitated and useless as in Prom Night. At best the boyfriend is reduced to tagging along with the Final Girl who is nearly always left to save herself." We got this information from "A Legacy Of Blood" by Jim Harper. We decided to follow the stereotypical slasher mentality by having the blonde sexually available female as the victim, who is killed off in the first few minutes of the film as in films such as Scream (Wes Craven 1996). I feel this gives the audience a firm view that our film is of the slasher genre. The locations for in our product are all familiar to the audience and all I feel highlight the post modern era such as the cellar is similar the the rooms used in Hostel (Eli Roth 2006). Our central protagonist Nancy is named after Nancy from A Nightmare On Elm Street (Wes Craven 1984).
We decided if we developed the film further we would have the killer kidnapping his cousin, or someone of relation to him because from our research we found this is a common convention of the genre. We used a knife as the killers weapon as a reference to Psycho and to give the killer more power and dominance as a knife is seen as a phallic object and therefore stabbing someone is seen as a symbolic form of rape, also emphasising the girls vulnerability. In the kidnapping scene we had the killer capture the girl by putting a plastic bag over her head which is a reference to Black Christmas (Glen Morgan 2006) and when the girl had black tape our her mouth we got this idea from The Signal (David Bruckner 2007).
The poster we designed for our film was an inter textual reference to Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960) as we designed it with slashes similar to the ones in the opening titles of Psycho and turned these into stairs as to be more fitting with the title of our film.
We considered the growing popularity of Hybrid genres which we came across in our research for instance Jason X (James Issac 2001) however we decided to say with a single genre to boost appeal to horror fans.
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