Is horror the most progressive genre for women? Matthew Wilson dissects the top examples of empowering female representation in horror films.
This is something that I’ve been rolling around in my mind for a while now, and I’ve held off on it until closer to Halloween to tie into the spirit of the season. Now I’m not here to discuss gender political in the cinematic climate but occasionally the claims that films, and in particular horror films, are sexist do make you think. And yes horror films do have an overabundance of female nudity for no other reason than titillation but if you look – and not even look that hard – you can see that horror films do actually present women with some of the best, and most iconic, characters that help define the genre into what it is today and what it will be in the future.
Obviously, I could go right back to the 50s or even the 30s. Where the likes of Fay Wray were among the earliest of what would later be known as The Scream Queens.
But I’ll start in the 1970s, when horror entered it’s golden age and brought with it a slew of female-centric performances. An obvious first choice would be Halloween: John Carpenter’s intense classic that brought Jamie Lee Curtis to the forefront as Laurie Strode, the babysitter who found herself fighting against evil incarnate in the form of Michael Myers. By today’s standards Laurie might be a little lacking but she’s a very real character. Her unassuming manner, and utter terror, mirrored the audience’s and, as a result, she became the archetype for horror’s favourite trope, The Final Girl.
The fact that Final Girl has become such a staple of the horror genre should be enough to show the genre is much more female friendly. It’s very rare to have a Final Boy, usually it’s the lone female that faces off against the villain and comes out on top. This was also the case with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in the same decade, which took its Final Girl, Sally, to places very few horror films, even by today’s standards, have the guts to take their lead survivor and ended with her pretty much losing her mind.
The 70s also brought with it several now-classic adaptations of horror novels. One of the most popular being Stephen King’s Carrie. The film allowed for a study of peer pressure and puberty in the guise of a psychological massacre. It’s a film that still has a relevant message today about how vulnerable, and confused and scared, teen girls can get when their bodies change and suddenly everyone is making fun of them for something they can’t control. With Sissy Spacek garnering an Oscar nomination for her traumatic portrayal.
Similarly, the other big adaptation of the decade also dealt with a body going through changes but on a vastly different scale. The Exorcist is one of the most important films in horror because it’s the first horror film to be nominated for Best Picture. As well as gathering three acting nominations. Including Best Actress for Ellen Burstyn and Best Supporting Actress for Linda Blair.
Even now, getting an acting nod for a horror film is a rare occurrence. So, for this film to have its two female leads both get the nomination is something to be admired.
Despite the priests taking the majority of the film, it’s Reagan that you remember the most. Becoming the most vital part of the whole film and, even at a young age, Linda Blair does an incredibly brave job with the mature subject matter. While not as gender-specific as Carrie or even Laurie, Reagan is still a strong female presence in the film and it makes the corruption of her soul all the more intense, and hard to sit through, because she’s a young girl.
One of the most important female horror leads of the 70s, who would grow into one of the most important female leads of all time in the 80s sequel, is Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley.
It’s widely known that Ripley was originally written as a man in the original 1979 film Alien but Weaver slips into the role naturally. Showing that great character-writing isn’t set for being entirely masculine or entirely feminine. Ripley was just a well-written character that happened to be played by a woman and ended up as one of the best parts of the film.
Ripley’s popularity only grew once the sequel, Aliens, came out in 1986. Now with Ripley officially a woman, her character was able to grow in a new direction. That being: a survivor lost and traumatised following her last encounter and having lost fifty-seven years of her life as a result of being frozen in space.
While, in essence, Ripley is still a well-written character regardless of her gender, in this film (or at least the Director’s Cut) we see Ripley’s reaction to her daughter having grown up and died, while she was missing, which factors into Ripley’s relationship with Newt and the surrogate mother/daughter relationship they have. It’s a very human, but also very feminine, addition to Ripley’s character and helps her feel more like a real person. For her efforts in creating this iconic addition to the horror genre and cinematic landscape, Weaver got a Best Actress nomination. Still at a time when such things weren’t exactly commonplace.
Primarily, the 80s was the decade of the slasher and the rise of the Final Girls. Chief of which is Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson from A Nightmare on Elm Street.
While Freddy gets all the attention, for his one-liners and knife-gloves, it’s Nancy that stands out as one of the all-time best Final Girls. She’s not the sweet and nice, chaste, character you’d think. She’s actually quite mean at some points but she’s dealing with a guy that forces you to stay awake, her mental state isn’t the best and only gets worse as the film goes on. Heather went on to play the character twice more and cemented her place in horror history.
Freddy’s counterpart, Jason, never got a Nancy but he had a couple that tried. Ginny from Part 2 had the biggest impact, being one of the most memorable and likeable heroines to fight against Jason, as well as one of the smartest for using Jason’s love of his mother to her advantage.
Another was Tina from Part 7. Essentially another version of Carrie, Tina’s psychic powers manifested themselves as strange, and confusing, elements of her own mind that she couldn’t control. A puberty metaphor, for sure. If you believe that a Friday the 13th film can be that clever.
One of the most underrated horror films of the 80s is Clive Baker’s Hellraiser, which features two great female characters. The first is Kirsty Cotton, the final girl of the film who gets involved purely because she doesn’t trust her stepmother. Once things get out of hand, and the cenobites threaten to tear her soul apart, Kirsty shouts and swears and fights them all the way to save herself.
The other one is Kirsty’s stepmother, Julie, who once had an affair with her husband’s now dead brother Frank. Julie is a very different kind of character, her affair with Frank is clearly very psychologically abusive but, for one reason or another, Julie is so obsessed with this violent and dangerous man that, even after death, she’s devoted to him. You don’t see that type of character in horror films very often but it’s a very interesting character dynamic that more people need to take advantage of.
Another very underrated 80s horror, that features an incredibly brave performance from its lead actress, was The Entity. The film tackles the psychological trauma, and possible mental issues, that plague it’s lead, Carla, after she is sexually assaulted by an invisible assailant.
Rather than just saying who, or what, this thing is the film, instead, delves into Carla’s history and how her sexual past might be the cause of this whole thing. The film itself is great for how it works Carla’s backstory into the main plot of the film but it’s Barbara Hershey’s, very brave and very intense, performance as Carla that must be mentioned here. She goes all out for this character, flaws and all. She is displayed to us and we’re asked to make our judgement on her. It’s a rare case where the intimacy of the film matches the intimacy of the character, very few films allow that kind of in-your-face character building and even fewer with the guts to do it in this fashion but it works to help you understand who Carla is.
One of the biggest changes in the 80s, that built into the 90s and the decades to follow, was the idea of women being the villains. Not a wholly original concept but it was brought to the forefront in Stephen King’s Misery. Kathy Bate’s Annie Wilkes is an ageless character type, the celebrity obsessed stalker. The fact that she’s a female, who’s kidnapped the male character of Paul Sheldon, allows her to play the helpful nurse card a little longer. Whereas, if the roles were reversed, the feelings would immediately turn to sex as the reasoning behind everything. Bates delivers a high-strung, bi-polar, emotionally disturbed performance and one that has and absolutely should go down in horror history.
When the 90s came, a lot of audiences had grown quite savvy of the horror genre. Leading to filmmakers mixing things up a little. This change in audience mindsets manifested itself as Sidney Prescott from Scream. The whole Scream cast is based off of people who have watched too many horror films but Sidney is worthy of note because she’s just an ordinary person that’s in an extraordinary situation. She harks back to the Laurie Strode days of an ordinary person forced into a hellish time in her life. It’s just, in this case, that person is someone who grew up watching the Freddy and Jason movies.
While its standing as a horror film is debatable, Silence Of The Lambs brought us an incredible female performance from Jodie Foster, on Oscar-winning form, as Clarice Starling.
Clarice isn’t tough, at least not in the physical sense. She’s a small woman surrounded by large men who constantly underestimate her abilities as an FBI agent.
Starling has a lot of baggage in her past. She’s ashamed of her West Virginia heritage. She’s traumatised from her childhood surroundings, her father’s death and the death of the lambs on her cousin’s farm. Starling’s desire to reinvent herself, and prove her worth as an FBI agent, feels so genuine. If Starling was a male, it would still be a great character trait but, because she’s a woman, she has to fight all the harder to prove her worth. She is easily one of the all time great female characters and a brilliant leading lady of horror.
With the new millennium, women in horror movies continued their upward trend. Following the 90s reinvention, they became bigger and better characters.
Taking notes from Misery, the rise of women as villains become even more noticeable. Ginger Snaps, a little Canadian film which brought werewolves into the same realm as puberty. Sisters Ginger and Bridgette both deserving of praise not just for their individual roles but their relationship as well.
At the start, both are death-obsessed loners happier in each other’s company than other people. But when Ginger gets bitten by a werewolf she goes through a change of mind and body. On her own merits, watching Ginger transform into this sexually charged beast would’ve made for a great film by itself but the addition of Bridgette adds an entirely other level in which, the much more timid and quiet, Bridgette has to deal with her sister slowly turning away from her and into this violent bloodthirsty animal. Being torn between the fear and disgust at watching Ginger kill and the love and respect she has for her sister. The relationship is the key to the movie and it’s metaphor for once close sisters reaching puberty at different ages and drifting apart brings it up into the greats for horror females.
One of the earliest examples of the genre reinvention for the 2000s was Selena from 28 Days Later. Played by Naomie Harris in what should’ve been a career defining role. Selena is the take-no-prisoners, badass loner, in female form. She’s tough as nails and, although that act drops once, she spends more time with Jim and Hannah and warms to the idea of friendship. It’s a nice change of pace for the badass loner to be the female this time around and it makes sense that, in this zombie apocalypse, only the tough will have survived. Regardless of gender. Selena had the makings of a modern day Ripley and, had the sequel continued her story, she very well could’ve been.
In horror, as in the rest of cinema, the popular films didn’t give off the best representation. The smaller, and more genre-focussed, works brought in the best female characters. And it was the French that ruled this area for pretty much the entire decade.
The 2000s held the era of what is known as French New Wave Horror, a period when several horror films came out of France with a dark foreboding chill and lashings upon lashings of gruesome, and horrific, acts of violence. Even the most hardcore of horror fan has had trouble with these films. However, as explored in our examination of French extremism, the majority of them have very strong and very well-written female characters at the front of them all. From the intensity of Inside, to the tragic insanity of Martyrs, this period of time belonged to the French.
Still though, it wasn’t just the French that made great modern horror females. A few close to home were finding the right mix of heroines and villainesses to inhabit their films.
In 2006 Adam Green, one of the most vocal and impressive voices of modern horror, gave us one of the best modern day Final Girls in his debut, old-school slasher, Hatchet. With Marybeth Dunston, originally played by Tamera Feldman in the first film and by Danielle Harris (who herself has played several great female horror characters in her career) in the two sequels.
Marybeth is very much a f***-you character. She’s got one mission - to kill the antagonist, Victor Crowley. And she will take on anyone that gets in her way, regardless of how much blood she gets covered in. Hands-on heroines are not new to horror but Marybeth is one of the few that gets this physically involved with the situation.
Towards the later parts of the 2000s, a little film came out that may not have set the world on fire but it carried with it a strong lead female performance. That movie was Teeth and the lead character Dawn is one of the most interesting horror females I can think of.
Sex has always been a staple of horror movies, slashers in particular with the majority of them using sex as a manner of killing off horny young women that get their boobs out, but Teeth handles sex on a very different level. Here, Dawn’s affliction manifests itself as a curse that threatens to ruin her life before she finally understands how to use her power to her advantage. Essentially turning sex into a weapon.
Dawn’s new-found confidence in herself, and how she handles her body, is something very few films have done. True, vagina dentata is a little out-there but the body-confidence, and sexual awakening, are both key points to a young woman’s life. And Dawn’s acceptance of her body is something that can be admired.
Arguably, the most important horror film for female characters (and my personal favourite) is Neil Marshall’s The Descent. Aside from the opening scene, the entire film is inhabited by women as the main characters. Aside from this being a great opportunity to have female camaraderie be the focal point of the movie instead of a dick-measuring contest, it also makes it harder to guess who’ll live and who’ll die. Since no-one adheres to stereotypes.
Out of the whole six of them, the two best-written were Juno and Sarah. Juno was the de facto leader but her overconfidence in herself, and willing to push everyone further than they had any ability to go, was what lead the group into danger. She’s strong-willed but that is her biggest flaw and ends up costing her dearly.
Sarah, on the other hand, is a much quieter, and emotionally weaker, character. But, in the dark of the caves, her grief and, subtle hints of depression following events earlier in the film, bring about hallucinations, and visions, that plunge her deeper into the descent of madness. The Descent’s choice to use an all-female cast is one of its biggest selling points and it’s one of the few horror films that realises that great female characters are defined by their flaws as much as their strengths.
Entering the final stage of this look at the iconic female characters of horror, we look at some modern classics in the making with the 2010s. This decade, so far, has had a strong selection of female characters fighting back. Of course, that can be said about every single one of these films here but the 2010s has brought out some stronger, and much more demanding, female roles of the past few years.
You’re Next has one of the most talked-about Final Girls in the shape of Erin, who finds herself trapped in her boyfriend’s family house when they are besieged by masked killers during an anniversary dinner. Rather than standing back and hiding, Erin grabs the nearest weapon she can find and gets right to work.
It’s not even that she needs to build up to this point, straight off the bat she’s in survival mode. Which is probably why she’s so well received.
One of the more recent horror films, not only one of the best horror films of the last ten years but one which has a lead female performance so good that it should’ve done for Essie Davis what Aliens did for Sigourney Weaver, is The Babadook.
Davis plays Amelia, a single mother who has been raising her troubled son Samuel his entire life after his father died in a car crash driving, then-pregnant, Amelia to the hospital for his birth. Lost, and stuck in her dull, lonely life with a frightened and disturbed young son clawing at her last nerve, Amelia’s life takes a sinister turn when a violent children’s book called Mister Babadook enters her life.
Psychological horror is one of the strongest, if done right, and with Davis’ all-in performance it’s done really right. Making you question her entire mindset and how damaged her psyche is. Davis’ performance, and director Jennifer Kent’s vision, blend together to make a female lead that makes you question if she is really being haunted or if a lack of sleep and emotional turmoil has finally creeped up on her and manifested itself as a children’s book.
The quest for cinematic equality will be going on for a while and, even with all that we’ve looked at, horror is still predominantly male. But I hope I’ve shown that, for over forty years, the genre has been churning out some of the best-written female characters in film.
The big awards might not see it as a genre worth investing time in but, for fans, this is one of the most open-minded fields in cinema and, with its collection of well-written female leads that seem to be getting stronger and more varied as the years go on, horror may, one day, become an entirely female game.
