Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson.
Not to be confused with Final Girl-a pretty decent slasher subversion starring Abigail Breslin-this instead seems to be a horror comedy about being sucked into a horror movie or whatever. I've never seen it before, but I like Farminga(most famous for the first and best American Horror Story(and, like, the shitty third season) and Dobrev(of the more-fun-than-it-should-be Prime Time Soap The Vampire Diaries), so I have some high hopes. There's good buzz surrounding it as well, so let's see what we've got here. I'm always skeptical about horror comedies, but every so often one will be pleasantly surprising. Let's hope The Final Girls delivers.
We open to a trailer for a fun-looking Eighties slasher film called "Camp Bloodbath." It's a pitch-perfect send-up of Friday The 13th, and one I would totally watch. It segues into an actually rather extraordinary and heartfelt interaction where Taissa Farminga-playing Max-is in the car with her actress Mother and the two bond over a lip-synching of Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes." I kind of love that song. More than I probably should. It can't win the "best usage" award for the year, though: American Horror Story:Hotel already won it. But, hey, it's still good. The way Max's eyes light up at her Mother's silliness is really an excellent moment by Farminga. It's fairly easy to see where the scene is going, but it works.
If nothing else, I'm more or less enjoying the cast. It's not the best dialogue in the world, but the cast is charismatic and very game for all of it. Taissa is suitably subdued, and deeply uncomfortable at going to see "Camp Bloodbath", which stars her now-deceased Mother, but is convinced by weirdo film-geek Duncan to go...and her Classics tutor(oddly hunky Alexander Ludwig) shows up because he's interested...and hyper-efficient Vicki(Dobrev, channeling every bit of stuck-up snobbery she has) also shows up to try and win Ludwig back. Lots of light character work, and we're finally into the movie. "Camp Bloodbath" is a strong parody, if a little on-the-nose, but it's short lived anyway: a fire breaks out and our characters slice their way through the cinema screen, and find themselves inside the movie.
There's no explanation given to how this came to be, but I don't think it really warrants one. It gets very clever rather quickly: once the film-geek surmises that a van carrying "Camp Bloodbath" characters(and a fictional fascimile of Max's deceased Mother, allowing Farminga to do some more great emotional moments) will return every ninety-two minutes(the running time of the film, which is very cute), he takes initiative and gets them all ingratiated into the cast. It's suitably trippy, cute, and every one of the cast just runs with it for all it's worth.
It also asks an age old genre geek question: if you find yourself in the fictional world you love, do you allow things to occur, or do you try and change things? Each character has different approaches to that conundrum, which also asks interesting questions about horror cinema in general: film geek Duncan has no problem watching two characters get brutally murdered, deciding that it's no different than watching the movie. The others are less enthused by the spectacle.
Duncan's theories about the nature of their new-found reality are ultimately, and delightfully, proven hilariously wrong, which was making me really nervous for a bit. Now I feel better.
This movie really only does have two basic modes: the comedy of being in an eighties horror film and the emotional beats of Max's relationship with her Not-Mother. Those aren't bad modes to be stuck in, though: the jokes are only fitfully funny but they ARE clever and very cute. The movie is taking an extraordinary amount of pride and enthusiasm for the "stuck in the film" bits-the stuck characters even find themselves dragged along for the ride when there's a flashback-and manages to make it work even when it shouldn't.
Malin Akerman and Farminga are fantastic, if nothing else. Actually, everyone really is, but Akerman and Farminga are giving everything the weight it really needs to be anything more than a silly pastiche.
The Final Girls DOES win best use of Warrant's "Cherry Pie," though. Easily.
It's really difficult to discuss this film without spoiling anything, and it's worth not spoiling. I feel like this is another case of me really only have any ability to analyze this film is going to be through my final thoughts(where I can be vague about things that work and don't work via euphamism) instead of through as-we-go discussion.
The last act started off with some really strong promise but admittedly starts to show some wear and tear as things go on, especially as it seems to break its own rules. But, I guess I can more or less accept it, even if I don't like it. It seems to get over that hiccup, though, and moves on nicely enough to a spirited finale.
Okay, so call-back of "Bette Davis Eyes" just made me tear up, so...maybe it can SHARE the best use award of 2015. I mean, seriously, what a scene. What. a. scene. Okay, screw it, it wins. Best use of Bette Davis Eyes this year.
Final Thoughts: Well, it's been a long, long time since a horror-comedy basically made me cry, so what can I say? Everyone was pretty great, but Malin Ackerman and Taissa Farminga absolutely nailed it. It might get a little TOO carried away with itself at times, but it succeeds so frequently that it's impossible to find it anything but charming. It isn't as funny as it could be, but in the end it clearly is far more interested in the emotional beats and the cleverness. But those emotional beats really DO work really well, especially from Ackerman and Farminga.
Final Rating: Four Stars. Really good stuff.
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