Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

The Final Girls Blu-ray Movie Review

Last Horror Heroes.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 3, 2015

Retro-styled Horror movies -- Slasher flicks that hearken back to the 1980s heyday of Jason, Freddy, and Michael -- seem like a growing trend at the moment. Movies like Lost After Dark are leading the charge in the return to the simpler pleasures of hack-and-slash violence and hormonal teenagers winding up on the wrong side of a sharp object. But forcing the issue isn't a formula for success, as Lost After Dark proved. It takes more. It takes love and appreciation, not just a mask and a machete. Enter The Final Girls, a lovingly created 80s-themed Slasher flick that doesn't just recall the era, it inhabits it. Like, really inhabits it, as in 2015 winds up transplanted into 1980-something. It's a spunky and spirited film that understands its charge and blends classic genre motifs and modern fandom with ease.

Amanda Cartwright (Malin Akerman) once starred in one of the fan-favorite 80s Horror movies, Camp Bloodbath. Now decades removed from the role, she's tried to move on but cannot distance herself from the part that made her famous. She's doing her best to raise her teenage daughter Max (Taissa Farmiga), but she's struggling to find work and pay the bills. Unfortunately, a car accident takes Amanda's life, leaving Max alone. Several years later, she's invited to a screening of Camp Bloodbath. She initially balks at the idea but her friends talk her into going. A fire breaks out in the theater. The exits are crowded, and her group's only hope of escape is to cut through the screen. When they do so, they find themselves inside the movie, at the very beginning. As time passes, the movie loops back to its starting point until they decide to become involved and rewrite cinema history.

Think Last Action Hero reshaped for Horror and get an idea of what to expect in The Final Girls. A magic ticket is replaced with a slash through a movie screen, and there are several victims, er, teenagers, transported into the movie rather than a single preteen fanboy, but the principle is essentiality the same that sees the real world intersect with movie make-believe. Much like Last Action Hero, The Final Girls demonstrates a deep understanding of its genre -- all the types and tropes -- and what it means to be a fan. The intersection of camp moviemaking and intense love for it results in a fun, brisk watch that's both a straight ode to the classics of yore (Friday the 13th in particular) and a smart, savvy, but not at all dishonest reworking of the formula once the meshing of the two worlds takes full effect. The movie is very much self-aware and packed with sweeping homage and subtle winks-and-nods alike that should delight longtime genre fans who know the movies so well that they could probably fit right in (modern day straight hair styling notwithstanding). But could they survive?

The Final Girls benefits greatly from its keen insight and understanding of 80's Horror and Director Todd Strauss-Schulson's (A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas) and Writers M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller' abilities to so effortlessly mesh it with more modern sensibilities and character self-awareness. Beyond the few primaries, characters are largely reduced to single-cue development that allows the movie to hone in on basic qualities while giving the primaries a little more breathing room to develop under the flood of tickles and teases and everything else that floods the screen. Cast is terrific as well on both sides of the coin, both in terms of the more singleminded Adam Levine types and the more complicated, but hardly inaccessible, leads who don't so much drive the story but instead reinforce it. The unique mother-daughter relationship doesn't add much more than an interesting dynamic -- there's not a ton of deep, meaningful exploration to any facet of the relationship -- but it at least gives the movie a weight that balances the otherwise heavy-on-the-nostalgia construction that's also offset by some timely, and sometimes self-deprecating, humor.

The Final Girls Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Final Girls lacks the filmic, grainy texture of its 80s brethren, opting instead for a smooth digital shoot, but the results still satisfy. An amber tint dominates much of the movie, yielding mildly golden flesh tones. Colors transition to a brighter, more consistently cheerful appearance as the action shifts into Camp Bloodbath where natural greens are vibrantly diverse and various camp attire and accents jump off the screen. Details are exacting, revealing flowing hair, intimate skin and clothing details, vegetation, the killer's mask, and other broad and intimate elements alike with incredible precision and clarity. Black levels are deep and rich. Trace amounts of banding are visible in a few shots but noise, macroblocking, aliasing, and other unwanted intrusions are nowhere to be found. Several black-and-white segments seen when Camp Bloodbath transitions to a scene from the 1950s yield the same glossy digital texture but the grayscale appears precise.

The Final Girls Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Final Girls features a splendid DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Music is robust and rich, yielding seamless stage immersion, precision clarity, and hefty bass even through the more complexly chaotic synth-style beats that hammer through the listening area in the film's most perilous moments. The imitation "ki, ki, ki; ma, ma, ma" drifts nicely about the stage in all its airy, foreboding glory. Various sounds of violence are well defined, whether a rolling, crunching car or screaming victims. Natural ambient effects fill the stage with regularity, particularly the sounds of nature heard outside the camp, such as insects and deep rolling thunder. Dialogue is filmily positioned in the front-center and enjoys consistent prioritization and vocal definition.

The Final Girls Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Final Girls contains two commentary tracks; a handful of deleted, extended, and alternate scenes; and some special effects features.

• Audio Commentary: With Director Todd Strauss-Schulson, Production Designer Katie Byron, Director of Photography Elie Smolkin, and Actors Thomas Middleditch and Taissa Farmiga.
• Audio Commentary: With Writers M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller.
• Deleted, Extended and Alternate Scenes (1080p): Prologue (2:41), Car at Night (2:54), Zing Me (1:09), Gay Dads (2:08), Depressed Dock Girls (3:44), Gertie & Blake Extended Kiss (0:49), Slooooow Mooooootion (3:08), Original Ending (3:28), and Reshoot Ending (2:10). With optional director's commentary.
• Pre-Vis Animation (1080p): Scenes created in the digital realm prior to shooting. Included are Car Crash (0:49), Theater Fire (1:56), Campsite Entrance (0:15), Campsite Spin (0:39), and Booby Trap (2:05).
• Visual Effects Progression Reel (1080p, 2:33): A short and quickly moving look at how scenes are developed and manipulated along the way to film's completion.
• Director's Shooting Notes: A BD-ROM only feature.

The Final Girls Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Final Girls blends nostalgia trip with self-awareness in a Last Action Hero-like time capsule of a movie that takes classic 80's Horror stylings and brings a handful of hungry fans and a lead character with a connection to the movie into the retro world of summer camp hack-and-slash. It's hardly brilliant but it's very well done, capturing not only the broader essence of a favorite genre but understanding what it means to be a fan, just taken here from one side of the screen to another. Horror hounds should love this, and anyone even passably familiar with 80s Slasher trope should find it at least passably enjoyable. Sony's Blu-ray release of The Final Girls features excellent video and audio to go along with a satisfying assortment of extra content. Highly recommended.