Review of The Final Girls (2015) by Jeo T — 10 Apr 2018

Strengths: Nina Dobrev (Vicki). Simply her. She's great in everything and looks damn good doing it. She was the standout as the prototypical "mean girl" of the story. Onto bigger details, the world of horror parody is nothing new, but this film does a fine job tackling that. They poke fun at the cheesy side of those movies with some grace. Doing so by taking us into the world of an actual slasher film was a nice twist on it. Though I made it a point to praise Nina Dobrev, she was far from alone. Taissa Farmiga (Max) and Malin Akerman (Nancy/Amanda) were both good and has a strong mother/daughter bond. Adam DeVine (Kurt) was hilarious and got all the best comical lines. The soundtrack was also a highlight.

Weaknesses: As noted, horror parodies are nothing new. That means this wasn't the most original of films. The way it was set up made the finish feel very predictable. It was pretty obvious how this was going to end and who was going to survive. I didn't care much for Alexander Ludwig (Chris) in this one. He wasn't bad, but he didn't add much. His chemistry with Taissa lacked where it needed to be great. At times, it seemed to be all over the place in terms of tone and shifted far too often and far too frequently.

Overall: You can find better horror parodies all over the film world. However, the doesn't mean this is lacking charm. It features a good cast who bring some good laughs. There are some fun moments throughout that keep you engaged, but will probably be forgotten rather quickly.