Final Girl (2015)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent adaptation.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Very bad actress, at least in this movie. She lost the talent with the age. I don't understand how this actress was selected for this role. Her body does not look like a trained killer, but a pancake-eater

I was bored this day and searching Netflix for something different when I came across this little gem of a movie. To me its IMDb rating is misleading, it actually accomplishes its purpose very well. It is a guilty pleasure where the pretty girl gets the advantage over the naughty boys.Watching the movie suggested themes from "Hanna" where a young girl is raised in the wilderness by an older man to be an assassin. The girl here is Abigail Breslin as Veronica and she is trained from a very young age, after passing a difficult intelligence test, by Wes Bentley as William.The core story is about a group of four friends who have a fixation on pretty, young blond girls. One of them befriends them, they take her out to a secluded place in the woods at night, and she ends up dead. William lost his daughter to them and he wants Veronica to be able to effect his revenge. This is plain and simple a revenge movie, you can't say the guys didn't have it coming to them. It is rather well made and I especially liked the lighting effects in the woods at night.

SPOILERS This film left me with a lot of questions and I've come to realize that the answer to every single one of them is "because it is a dumb and senseless movie." Here are a few for you to sample: How did these murderers who are in high school kill William's wife and daughter over ten years ago? Did they kill them when they were 6 years old? Why doesn't William just kill them himself or turn them into the police? Why are they waiting ten years to train this little girl while other women are being murdered when they already know who the killers are and could stop them? Why does Veronica have a crush on William? He adopted her when she was a little girl and is basically her father. Isn't this messed up? Why does William tickle her? That was so weird! Why do they choke out that random guy at the bar? Why can't she just shoot them? If a gun without bullets is a paperweight why can't she just take more bullets? Why isn't she allowed to wear shoes? If she's going to drug them why can't she just poison them? What woman in their right mind would wear formal attire and drive into the woods with four men they just met? Why does it take her so long to kill these bozos when she's been training for ten years and they are drugged? Why is this guy so scared of pandas? I thought she wasn't allowed to use a gun so why does William shoot the last guy? Why didn't he shoot them ten years ago? If he was there the whole time with a gun why was he letting her try and fist fight them to death when he could have easily killed them? Who made this movie? Who reviewed the script and thought "this is good"? How was this disaster ever made?

Unlike many reviewers here, I didn't hate this film. It had a strong visual style with great use of colour and light, it had a good concept and some interesting characters. Unfortunately, once you know the what and the why of the film it plays out exactly as you expect. It doesn't offer any twist, or complexity. I was surprised that the movie chose to show us all it's cards right out of the door. All of the background information on the lead could have been done as a flashback after she been put in danger, or after the first kill. This sort of mid-story revelation would have given the story a little more punch. My biggest disappointment was that despite spending a lot of Time with Veronica I was left wanting to know more about her. She was interesting and her story arc just seemed to be beginning. I think this movie would have been much better as a TV show.If the story could be condensed into 1 hour (easy enough to do given this film's slow pace) it could have been the set up for a series. Like Dexter but with a Young Female lead and an assassin instead of a serial killer. Each episode she could have killed some killers, kidnappers, psychopaths, gangsters or other scum. And we'd get the chance to see her get more confident and powerful. We could also see her relationship with her mentor develop. Perhaps it ending with them falling out and her tracking him down as the last kill of the season. At the end of the day, I enjoyed this film well enough, but will not likely recommend it to anyone. A missed opportunity.