Horror movies have formulated a lot of tropes over the years, from the comic relief dying first to the killer wearing some sort of mask to hide their identity. The trope that stands out the most across all other tropes and even subgenres of horror would be the final girl trope. A final girl is almost always the sole survivor and the one to finally put an end to the person or entity that has terrorized her and either her friends or family. She’s typically determined and over the course of the movie develops the skills necessary to face whatever form of evil has been upending her life.
Final girlsare more often than not the much-needed hero of horror movies. The final girl fights with all her willpower and walks away bruised but alive. Although, sometimes the final girl doesn’t save the day if there’s even a final girl at all. A much less common trope in the horror movie space, but still present nonetheless, is the final boy. Sometimes saddled up with a final girl and sometimes all on his own, the final boy is an interesting character type when compared to the final girl.
Both a final girl and a final boy can appear in different subgenres of horror, from slasher to psychological to paranormal. While the final girl and the final boy can both be teenagers or young adults, the final girl is almost always a teen or in her very early twenties. Final boys can range from a young child to a man over 30. There are fewer age limitations put on the final boy. This allows for different perspectives than we may see with the final girl. Here are ten horror movies that feature a final boy:
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10Will - The Invitation (2015)
After receiving an invitation from his ex-wife, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) brings his girlfriend to a dinner party at her house. The past reopens old wounds and creates new tensions while the party guests and the city outside erupts into chaos around them. The tension builds slowly inThe Invitation.As the night continues on, Will becomes increasingly concerned that something is not right within the house. He grows weary of the other dinner party guests and ends up in a fight for his life and his girlfriend’s life while the outside world around them seems to be matching the energy within the house.
9Marty - The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Five college friends go to a remotecabin out in the woodsduring a break. They get more than they bargained for when the true nature of the cabin starts to reveal itself to the young friends. In addition to the male characters rarely making it out alive in most horror films, the stoner friend is also a character that usually gets it.The Cabin in the Woods, however, subverts both of these tropes by having Marty (Fran Kranz) become the final boy of the film. As the rest of their friends get picked off by the strange nature of this atypical cabin, Marty makes it to the end, along with the classic final girl Dana (Kristen Connolly).
8Charley - Fright Night (2011)
A remake of the 1985 film of the same name,Fright Nightfollows Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin), a young man who discovers that his seemingly nice new neighbor is actually an ancient vampire named Jerry (Colin Farrell), who intends to cause harm to the neighborhood after a series of deaths in the community. When no one believes him, Charley enlists the help of “vampire killer” Peter Vincent (David Tennant) to help him put an end to Peter’s reign of destruction.
Charley spends a lot of the movie trying to make people believe that Jerry is responsible for the string of deaths that have occurred in their neighborhood, but no one believes this teenage boy over a grown adult. Even Peter, the supposed vampire killer, doesn’t believe that vampires actually exist. Charley must battle the ancient immortal on his own, ultimately coming out on top.
7Joel - Smile (2022)
Psychiatrist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), plagued by dark memories of her own childhood, witnesses a frightening incident with a disturbed patient who claimed something was going to kill her. After the incident, Rose starts to lose her grip on reality when she sees anunexplainable entity following heraround everywhere she goes. She enlists the help of her cop ex-boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner), who seems to be the only person who doesn’t think she’s making everything up.
One of the interesting aspects of Joel being the final boy inSmileis that story does not center around him. Not only that, but he actually doesn’t have many scenes. Other than when the police arrive at the hospital after the initial incident that causes Rose to spiral, he is only seen when Rose asks for his advice or help. That is, until the end of the movie, where he goes to find Rose in the now abandoned house she grew up in. Rose faces off with the entity that won’t let her go, and Joel is outside, unscathed.
6Kale - Disturbia (2007)
After losing his father in a car accident, life for Kale Brecht (Shia La Beouf) unravels, and is eventually placed under house arrest when he punches his Spanish teacher. With nothing better to do with his time, he spies on his neighbors from his bedroom window. He notices what looks like a murder happening across the street, but when Kale becomes obsessed with finding out the truth, it becomes a matter of life or death for him and his friends.
Disturbiatakes its Hitchcock influences and wears them on its sleeve. Heavily leaning into the plot from Rear Window, Kale spends the movie bound by the ankle monitor around his leg that confines him to his property lines, much like James Stewart’s L.B. Jefferies. He has to send his friends to the house across the street to do the investigating for him while he watches through his binoculars as he figures out a way to alert the authorities without breaking his probation or getting himself killed in the process.
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5Jesse - A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
A new family moves into the house on Elm Street and once again the teen who lives there is struck with nightmares of the deceased child murderer, Freddy Krueger. This time around, Freddy tries to possess a teenage boy to continue his reign of terror over the kids of the waking world. Although the movie itself is not the best, Jesse is perhaps one of the more notable final boys in the horror landscape.A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revengelacks the originality of the first film, but Jesse has a similar determination that Nancy had in the original. Even with Freddy actively trying to turn him into a murderer as well, Jesse prevails.
4Sam & Michael - The Lost Boys (1987)
Two brothers move to a coastal town in California with their single mother. The town has been devastated by recent deaths that may or may not be linked to the town’s biker gang. The younger brother befriends two boys who claim to be vampire hunters, while the older brother gets drawn into the notorious biker gang inThe Lost Boys.
Michael (Jason Patric) gets sucked into the vampire biker gang by a girl he forms a crush on, and eventually gets turned into a vampire himself. His younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) attempts to put a stop to the vampire clan with the help of his new friends, and his grandfather.Both brothers live to tell the taleafter their grandpa kills the head vampire, effectively ending the curse that altered Michael’s life.
3Jim - 28 Days Later (2002)
A group of animal activists releases chimpanzees from a laboratory in London, despite the pleas of a scientist due to the chimpanzees being infected with a virus that causes rage. The activists ignore his desperate pleas, and a bicycle courier named Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up almost a month later to find himself in an abandoned hospital. With zombie-like humans infecting the city, Jim and a few people he finds along the way must adapt to survive.
28 Days Latershows Jim’s attempt to adapt to his new surroundings as his way of life is dying out. With some guidance from the survivors who saved him, Jim learns to fend off the infected people taking over his city to become the film’s heroic final boy.
2Chris - Get Out (2017)
Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) takes a trip with his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) to visit her parents in upstate New York. At first, he thinks that her family’s awkward behavior is their way of coping with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as more increasingly disturbing encounters happen, Chris is led to a discovery he never could have imagined.
Get Outis an incredibly well-madehorror/thriller by Jordan Peele. The film goes places you don’t think it will go to, and our protagonist Chris fends for himself, despite an entire family actively trying to murder him in an unfamiliar place, in a house that is designed to keep him trapped. He ultimately escapes his captors to become one of modern horror’s best final boys.
The sequel to Sam Raimi’sThe Evil Dead, and also a remake of sorts,Evil Dead 2follows Ash Williams as he battles the Deadites awakened by the Book of the Dead that he accidentally summoned by reading the ancient book. Once the Deadites are summoned, they swarm the isolated cabin and the woods surrounding it. They systematically possess and kill off his girlfriend and the journalists trying to help until he is the only one left standing.
Instead of giving up or running away, Ash leans into the absurdity of the Deadites. They are absolutely unhinged and will maim people in any way they possibly can. They don’t just kill, they toy with Ash and his friends' emotions and torture them until they have had enough. Ash decides to go just as insane as them, even giving himself a chainsaw as a hand when his actual hand is cut off, and goes after them without any hesitation, making him one of horror’s funniest and most chaotic final boys.
