A final guy is similar to a final girl but not the same. As we all know, the final girl is a staple of the horror genre. Fans recognize the final girl as the sole female survivor in a horror movie. She is the last woman alive to fight against the killer. But this is not her only key trait. These characters tend to be innocent. They don’t do anything that would be considered immoral, such as consume drugs or alcohol, or participate in sexual acts. This innocence of theirs is part of what ends up helping them survive in moments where their peers perish. Because they abstain from having sex with their partners, they are not stabbed while having intercourse. Because they don’t drink or consume drugs, they can run when the killer is close.
Carol J. Clover. 2022. UC Berkeley.
Originally coined by Carol J. Clover and explored in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws, the final girl is a representation of everything that a woman is supposed to represent. Which means she has to be a combination of all, or the majority, of the characteristics that I mentioned before. While the final girl has been analyzed to death, a lot of people don’t even recognize the “final guy” trope.
What’s a “Final Guy”?
A final guy is a male character who confronts the killer at the end and manages to survive. A final guy is similar to a final girl but not the same. He does not adhere to the rules as some of the most recognizable final girls out there have to in order to survive, which Clover comments on in her book. She explains, “Boys die, in short, not because they are boys, but because they make mistakes. Some girls die for the same mistakes. Others, however, and always the main ones, die—plot after plot develops the motive—because they are female.” This means: the main survivor has to set herself apart from the rest of the victims to not be murdered. Sometimes, the final girl even has to embody some traits that are considered more masculine.
Meet Some of the Men Who Got Away With It!
Image from the film Evil Dead. 1981. IMDB
Ash Williams – Evil Dead
I would say that Ash Williams is one of the most well recognized final guys in horror movie history to ever grace us with his presence on the big screen. In the first movie from this franchise, it’s never explicitly stated that Ash is abstaining from having sex with his girlfriend Linda, but it is implied by the fact that at some point she taunts him in a sexual way. In later movies of the Evil Dead saga, we can see Ash being a flirt with other women, and in the TV show Ash vs Evil Dead, we find out he has a daughter with somebody he got pregnant way before the events of the first movie took place.
Image from the film Hostel. 2005. IMDB.
Paxton – Hostel
Paxton commits almost every immoral sin that a final girl would probably die for if she were to do the same things. But his biggest one is wanting to sleep with the locals so badly that he ignores some pretty obvious red flags in his crusade. It could be argued that he does get punished for this (after all, he does go through some horrifying torture methods before escaping), but he is the only one of his friends who survives at the end. And yes, it could be argued that, following horror movie logic, he gets to live because he atoned for his sins by getting tortured. But we cannot ignore that he was not a good person at the beginning of the story. For example, prioritizing thrill-seeking over the safety of his friends. And that is something we have seen other final girl’s female friends die for.
Meet the Women Who Would Have Not Gotten Away With It
Image from the film Halloween. 1978. IMDB.
Laurie Strode – Halloween
Laurie is a nice girl. She is an introverted high schooler who spends her time reading, hanging out with her friends, or babysitting. She comments in the movie that her dating life is practically non-existent due to her being kind of a nerd. And to nobody’s surprise, this lack of dating history is part of what ends up saving her. Every Halloween fan knows that Michael Myers kills his older sister after she has sex with her boyfriend. This hatred of his for teenagers having intercourse is what ends up getting Laurie’s friend Lynda killed. Lynda is strangled with a telephone cord moments after she finishes having sex with her boyfriend. The other thing that saves her is stabbing Michael in the neck with a knitting needle. This gives time to run away and save herself.
They get the short end of the stick! Don’t They?
Nancy Thompson – A Nightmare on Elm Street
Nancy Thompson, like Laurie Strode, is a high school student whose best friend also gets killed after having sex with her boyfriend. They are also both smart and kind-hearted individuals. Both have to adopt the more masculine role of the hero, when taking into account that Nancy fights against Freddy Krueger at the end of the movie, and she does this by setting up traps for him. This is explained in Carol J. Clover’s book: “The Final Girl is boyish, in a word. Just as the killer is not fully masculine, she is not fully feminine—not, in any case, feminine in the ways of her friends. Her smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance set her apart from the other girls and ally her, ironically, with the very boys she fears or rejects, not to speak of the killer himself.”
AFW. “A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – Fighting Freddy” Youtube, 29 May. 2023.
As you may have noticed, women cannot stray away too much from certain rules, or they most probably would end up being killed. Meanwhile, the final guy could be a lustful man and still survive. They also do not need to become more masculine the majority of the time, since most of them are already “man enough” to take on the villain.
Why It Sucks
The final girl has to embody the purest notion of femininity while also being able to step outside of typical gendered behaviors.This seems to happen because, as a society, we want perfect victims. We don’t tend to take too kindly to women we think deserved what was coming to them, and we care less when they die. So, in order for audiences to be able to sympathize with a female horror movie protagonist, most of the time they need her to be both likable and also not feel like a deviant that got what was coming to her.