Author Grady Hendrix Explores What Happens To 'Final Girls' After The Credits Roll
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2021
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The term 'Final Girl' was first coined by writer Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.
Society knows this trope well. But after the credits roll, audiences typically don't know much about what actually happens to that final girl. Or whether she can live a normal life after being hunted down by a masker killer.
Author Grady Hendrix unpacks that in his latest novel, The Final Girl Support Group.
"The ultimate faceless killer they can't escape is the forces of market capitalism. There's always a sequel. So even if you survive Part I and II, they're going to get you in Part III. And there's something terrible about that to me, that you never get to let your guard down," Hendrix said.
In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.
Email us at considerthis@npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Brianna Scott's earliest memory of seeing a horror movie? Well, she was about 12 years old in |
| 0:05.7 | middle school. The film was Halloween 2, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode versus the killer Michael. |
| 0:13.2 | Listen, listen, listen, because this is where it gets really weird and why this six out of my memory. |
| 0:18.3 | I remember being so scared by the movie that like I stayed up the entire night and I had a night |
| 0:23.2 | on in my room. I also took a knife to bed with me and I put it under my pillow just in case Michael |
| 0:34.6 | came to get me and because I was still pretty young my mom would come in and like check on me |
| 0:40.5 | and so she comes in my room and I'm still like sitting up in bed with the like knife next to me |
| 0:47.2 | and she's like, so why do you have this? To be fair, it was a butter knife. Brianna is now a producer |
| 0:53.8 | here at Consider This and we spoke because frankly, I'm not exactly a fan of the genre, whereas |
| 1:00.5 | she is a super fan with like deeply random recommendations. A really weird horror franchise that I |
| 1:07.2 | like is leprechaun and it stars more with Davis from Harry Potter and it's funny. It's a slasher. |
| 1:14.4 | It's hilarious. It's camp. Now I had a whole feminist rant about how I wasn't sure I could get |
| 1:20.8 | down with a genre that features women hunted down and ground up for entertainment. Brianna Scott |
| 1:26.5 | feels the opposite. She's in it for the final girl. Coined by writer Carol Clover, the final girl |
| 1:33.0 | is a character specific to horror films. The last girl or woman alive to confront the killer. |
| 1:38.3 | It's too late, Cruelver. I know the secret now. This is just a dream. I really like Nancy Thompson |
| 1:47.3 | for a night-round almsry because she was actually smart. Like everyone else around her was like, |
| 1:52.9 | oh, you know, we don't know what's going on and she was like, wait a minute, I'm going to find out. |
| 1:58.4 | She was being like an investigative reporter in a way. Like she wanted to know who Freddie was. |
| 2:03.2 | This is kind of slightly why I feel like for me as a woman, that's what is in it for me when the |
| 2:11.5 | final girls are smart and they're not particularly stupid and just kind of like, oh my gosh, |
| 2:17.2 | this killer is right and after me and I'm just going to take off my shirt in front of this window. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.