THE FINAL GIRLS (2015)

Studio:       Vertical Entertainment
Director:    Todd Strauss-Schulson
Writer:       M.A. Fortin, Joshua John Miller
Producer:  Michael London, Janice Williams
Stars:     Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman, Adam DeVine, Thomas Middleditch, Alia Shawkat, Alexander Ludwig, Nina Dobrev, Chloe Bridges, Angela Trimbur, Tory N. Thompson

Review Score:

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Summary:

A teenage girl and her friends are mysteriously transported inside a 1980s horror film starring the girl’s scream queen mother.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

High school student Max accompanies her actress mother Amanda Cartwright to an audition. On the drive home, Amanda laments her inability to land a meaningful role due to her reputation as a former 1980s scream queen in the cult horror movie “Camp Bloodbath.” Max spills a drink on Amanda’s headshots, momentarily distracting her mother and inadvertently causing a car crash. Max survives, but Amanda is killed.

Three Years Later – Max discusses her crush on classmate Chris with her best friend Gertie. Gertie’s stepbrother Duncan bargains with a reluctant Max to make a guest appearance at a midnight revival screening of “Camp Bloodbath” at the local theater.

Chris meets Max at the theater. Their flighty friend Vicki also attends the screening, as does Gertie. While Max marvels nostalgically at her mother’s performance, events within the theater begin oddly mimicking those onscreen until the theater mysteriously catches fire. Max, Gertie, Duncan, Chris, and Vicki escape through a tear in the screen and are magically transported into the movie.

The five friends eventually realize and accept that they are caught in a 92-minute loop trapping them at the fictional Camp Blue Finch in 1986. Pretending to be additional camp staff, the group makes friends with counselors Kurt, Mimi, Tina, Blake, and Nancy, who is the character played by Max’s mother.

Fearful that anyone who has sex will be killed by the movie’s main slasher Billy Murphy, Max tries talking her mother out of a planned sexual encounter with Kurt. Meanwhile, Max’s friends search the forest for keys thrown by Kurt in order to get his van and drive away from the camp.

The friends watch in horror as Mimi meets a hiker in the woods before both of them are murdered by Billy Murphy. Duncan assumes that they are safe from Billy’s blade because they are not part of the original script. However, Billy puts his machete into Duncan’s torso, causing the others to flee in fright. The friends try in vain to run away from the campsite, but always end up looping right back to where they started.

Paula, the movie’s bad girl heroine, arrives at the camp. Max’s friends decide that sticking close to Paula is their best chance for survival since she is the film’s surviving Final Girl. Max’s friends then pair off with the counselors and become further acquainted, with Max reconnecting to her mother through Nancy.

Nancy recounts the legend of Billy Murphy for the camp counselors. At the same time, Max, Gertie, Chris, and Vicki are somehow transported into a black and white flashback sequence where Billy Murphy’s origin plays out in 1957. Relentlessly teased by bullies at the camp, a young Billy is disfigured by fireworks thrown into an outhouse while trying to hide. Billy would later return for revenge before continuing to haunt the camp for many years afterward.

When the four friends return to 1986, Gertie is covered in blood from a murder witnessed during the flashback. The camp counselors are startled by the sight and go into a panic as they try fleeing the scene. Paula tries driving away with Kurt as her passenger only for Duncan to unexpectedly step out in front of her speeding vehicle, still alive despite his machete wound. Paula runs over Duncan and kills him before crashing her car. The impact ejects Kurt through the windshield and kills him. Paula dies when her car explodes.

The four friends explain what is happening to remaining counselors Tina, Blake, and Nancy. The consolidated group nominates Max to be their new Final Girl because she is a virgin capable of confronting Billy. Chris mentions that they need to defeat Billy with his own machete. When Max waffles over being the Final Girl, Nancy volunteers to take the role. Max consoles her mother once again before the group plans to strategically ambush Billy during the climactic slumber party scene.

Vicki makes peace with Max and Gertie while Chris prepares the traps. Max talks to Nancy about her mother while they make their own preparations. Max receives a friendship bracelet from Nancy. Max also tells Nancy that she can come back with her to her reality and have a new life.

Tina finds Vicki’s Adderall and becomes loopy from the drugs. Nevertheless, the group is able to restrain her exhibitionist tendencies long enough to perform a striptease as scheduled that lures Billy to their cabin.

Billy arrives. Tina is killed after landing in an animal trap. The group manages to impale Billy against a wall, although Blake is killed trying to retrieve the machete. Billy breaks free and chases the remaining survivors with flaming arrows. Billy kills Vicki and Gertie, but the girls still manage to ignite Billy.

While on fire, Billy chases Max, Nancy, and Chris in slow motion. When the three survivors become cornered, they have Nancy recall Billy’s origin story once again so that they can escape into the flashback. Arriving suddenly in the flashback, the bullies’ car hits Billy and Max is able to recover the machete. The trio follows young Billy from the outhouse to the cabin where he seeks refuge after being burned by the firecrackers. When the adult Billy recovers, Nancy ends the flashback to return everyone to 1986.

Back in 1986, Billy kidnaps Nancy after severely wounding Chris. Max leaves Chris in the chapel to recover while she goes to the cabin seen in the flashback. Max frees Nancy and the two of them battle Billy. Nancy uses the machete before the two girls flee back to the chapel.

Nancy realizes that she has to die in order for Max to become the Final Girl. Nancy convinces Max to let her go and Max responds by telling her mother that she loves her.

Nancy performs a striptease to lure Billy, who subsequently kills her. Max retrieves the machete and ultimately decapitates Billy after a protracted physical confrontation.

Max and Chris kiss as the end credits roll on the horizon behind them. The movie world seemingly melts away until Max finds herself presumably returned to reality, but recovering in a hospital. Also recovering at the hospital are Max’s friends, all of whom have returned to life, although Duncan sports a machete wound on his side. Suddenly, Billy Murphy bursts into the hallway and the group realizes that they have actually been transported inside the sequel, “Camp Bloodbath 2: Cruel Summer.”

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Review:

Pigeonholed as a forgotten scream queen thanks to her role as a virginity-losing counselor in the cult classic “Camp Bloodbath,” aging actress Amanda Cartwright soothes the sting of another fruitless audition by engaging in car ride karaoke with her daughter Max.  Closer to best friends than mother and daughter, Max is devastated when their vehicle suddenly bank shots off another, tragically taking Amanda’s life in the process.

Three years later, teenage Max still mourns her heartbreaking loss.  Max would prefer to pine in peace for hunky heartthrob Chris or mope over milkshakes with best friend Gertie.  That is until Gertie’s movie geek stepbrother Duncan makes an offer she can’t refuse and a hesitant Max becomes the VIP guest of honor at a midnight revival screening of her mother’s magnum opus.

What Max does not yet know is that she is about to fulfill a longstanding fantasy of finally reuniting with mom.  Or at least, the camp counselor character mom once played.  A fire breaks out in the theater, an escape route is torn into the screen, and through literal movie magic, Max and her friends are inexplicably transported to 1986, where they come face to face with the characters of “Camp Bloodbath,” including vengeful masked maniac Billy Murphy and his blood-soaked machete.  Never mind the family reunion.  Max and company have to make it out of a horror movie come to life, assuming they can figure out the rules for surviving in a fictional film world first.

Comedy-horror sendups of 1980s slashers have become commonplace enough to now be as derivatively overdone as the genre they lampoon for that very reason.  Where “The Final Girls” overshadows that glut is in the genuinely humorous context behind its gags.  Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson, “The Final Girls” doesn’t just point out tropes with a wink, expecting a pat on the back for simply identifying clichés every film fan already knows.  It plants well-worn chestnuts into clever setups before seeing them through to funny, original punchlines.

Clinging confidently throughout to a sense of humor that playfully blends comedy with horror, the film doesn’t trip itself up by being slavishly reverential to its references.  While obvious influences like “The Burning,” “Sleepaway Camp,” and “Friday the 13th” (review here) push the premise, “The Final Girls” pulls its chief inspiration from sources with a spirit of escapist film fantasy like “Back to the Future,” “Groundhog Day,” and “Last Action Hero.”

“Eh, it’s magic” is the extent of explanation for how Max transports inside “Camp Bloodbath” in the first place.  Once the comic carnage is in full swing, which is swiftly, rational reasons for anything going on have no practical use to the viewer anyway.  Fun is always the foremost focus.

Given the movie’s themes, some character motivations are mildly misguided.  Max pins the blame for her mother’s death onto her own chest, for instance.  Her grief would be just as deserving of sympathy even if she weren’t unfairly burdened with being inadvertently responsible for the accidental car crash.  Why writers M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller felt it necessary to bog Max down with such terrible guilt is a smidge of a mystery.

Along similar lines, Max’s romantic interest Chris is the person who puts together the main plan for killing Billy Murphy.  It’s terrific that the script ensures everyone in the cast has a meaningful purpose beyond just looking pretty, but it somewhat dilutes an otherwise strong portrayal of empowerment where the most heroic actions usually have a young woman holding the hilt.

Mixing this many moods of splatter, slapstick, and surprisingly sweet family drama leads to lopsided scenes where the balance topples in one direction more than the others.  Tenderly touching mother-daughter moments come on strong enough to make a Lifetime Channel screenwriter blush.  So much sweetness sits in the movie’s center that hardcore horror fans may even find themselves developing diabetes from the overemphasized tear-jerking.  Although “The Final Girls” often teases like it might tailspin too far into movie-of-the-week melodramatics, spiritedly sincere acting possesses an uncanny knack for pulling the nose up and putting the plane back on course.

As much overexertion as there is when it comes to tugging at heartstrings, the film makes out in the open nods to great 1980s gags without feeling like the references are smashing you square in the face.  Even though the movie may be too “meta” for some, “The Final Girls” still handles the core comedy and horror elements with enough care to keep the genre-blending entertainment at maximum capacity.  Like Joe Dante’s “Matinee” or the underrated “Popcorn” (review here), “The Final Girls” is a self-aware tribute to what makes movie-going a universally beloved experience, as well as being a smartly conceived and horrifically hilarious film in its own right.

Review Score:  80

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