Brow Beat

The Final Girls Trailer Promises a New Twist on the Meta-Horror Genre

By now, the meta-horror film, in which characters poke fun at scary-movie tropes even as they embody them, is a well-established genre: Think Scream and its sequels, the Wayans brothers’ Scary Movie, or the 2012 critical hit The Cabin in the Woods. But it looks like director Todd Strauss-Schulson may have found a new twist for the meta-horror formula, judging from the trailer for The Final Girls.

Taissa Farmiga stars as a teenager who, along with a group of friends, is supernaturally drawn inside a 1980s cult classic slasher movie starring her dead mother (Malin Akerman). Since they already know the plot of the movie, the teens have to figure out a way to escape alive. With plenty of jokes about bad writing, fake blood, and the fact that “everyone who has sex in this movie dies,” The Final Girls aims to please cinephiles and ’80s nostalgists. Debuting at SXSW earlier this year, The Final Girls got fairly positive reviews, with Variety’s Dennis Harvey calling it “good fun that should delight genre fans” with “an accessible in-joke.” The Final Girls will have a limited release in theaters and hit video on demand in October.