Horror movies actually have a majority of female protagonists, it being the only genre where women have more screen time and dialogue than men. However, like most genres, it sometimes carries a lot of prejudice from its earlier productions. When we look at the history of horror movies, there are some pivotal points to the relation between horror and the female subject. The Final Girl, a trope where the female protagonist kills the monster because she was pure (no sexual activity, drugs, or alcohol, unlike her friends), came a long way. The Final Girl was so used that it became the face of a few decades of horror, especially of slasher movies such as Halloween and the endlessly self-sustaining Scream. Even though they fought and defeated the monster, there was still a victim quality associated with them. This element, fortunately, has changed.
With the popularity of the feminist movement influencing women to demand their place in male-dominated fields like the entertainment industry, the stories presented in movies started to change. It became more common to have complex women who don’t submit to abusive relationships, such as in Ari Aster’s feature Midsommar or Mike Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game. Movies where women weren’t afraid - like the Final Girls were - of using their sexuality in their favor, like in Jennifer’s Body, or didn’t have to at all, like You’re Next. Or even movies that used horror to portray the everyday terrors of being a woman in today’s society, as in Hush.
Regardless of how they do it, feminist horror movies became extremely popular in the last several years, a few of them even becoming classics in a short period of time. Here are some of the best feminist horror movies.
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8 A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Vice Films
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is an Iranian black and white vampire movie that mesmerized audiences worldwide. Without the use - and need - of liters of red blood everywhere, director Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut feature is considered by many as a modern masterpiece. The vampire is a figure that usually over-sexualizes women, but Amirpour shows how much we can still appreciate a genre and monster without the stereotypes associated with them. A lonely vampire skater, known only as The Girl, goes after abusive men who take advantage of women in a fictional town called Bad City, in Iran. Considered to be the first Vampire Western ever made, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a mesmerizing modern classic.
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7 Us
Universal Pictures
The second horror feature from filmmaker Jordan Peele, Us is a fascinating new take on slasher movies. With a cast composed almost entirely of Black actors, Peele once again defied the stereotypes of people of color in horror movies. Stepping away from horrible tropes, he tells a story about Adelaide and her experiences with womanhood and motherhood. The film has a universal quality: we see the protagonist struggle to understand and accept her place, which is something everyone can relate with to some degree - even if they don’t have doppelgängers trying to kill them.
Adelaide takes her family to the same beach where she had a traumatic experience in when she was a child; after a family that looks exactly like them breaks into their home, the mother learns what it feels like to fight for her family - quite literally. A masterpiece of class consciousness, Us stars Lupita Nyong’o in brilliant roles as both hero and villain.
6 Raw
Raw made viewers around the world have visceral reactions; a few people left the cinema, and some even fainted due to the explicit on-screen cannibalism in the coming-of-age movie made by the French director Julia Ducournau. A story about women accepting - and even embracing - the monstrous parts of themselves, as well as acting upon their desires, Raw has to be on this list. This movie tells the story of a lifelong vegetarian who starts veterinarian school, but during a hazing ritual, Justine is forced to consume raw meat. This event triggers deep desires that she didn’t know existed - and that she now has no way of ignoring. Much like her recent, bonkers masterpiece Titane, this is a hard movie to watch for the faint of heart or those who don’t enjoy body horror.
5 Panic Room
Columbia Pictures
Another movie about motherhood, David Fincher’s 2002 thriller set the bar high for anyone who tried to do home invasion movies. While also breaking gender stereotypes and the idea of the rivalry between mother and daughter, Panic Room is a great example of complex female characters. With an incredible script, the audience feels as breathless as young Kristen Stewart when she has an asthma attack inside the panic room - and her inhaler is on the other side of the door that is keeping them safe. Meg and her daughter Sarah hide in the titular room when three men invade their house in the middle of the night. They will soon learn that staying there is not an option: there are things they need from outside the room, and the men want what’s inside.
4 Last Night in Soho
Focus Features
The most recent Edgar Wright movie was released in 2021, and the director continues to march ahead with his bold style. Using colorful lighting, an amazing sixties’ soundtrack, and London as the background, Last Night in Soho tells a complex story full of emotional moments and incredible twists - including murder. The movie follows two women, Sandie and Eloise, as they brave London in their own way and time period. Sandie (a fantastic, luxurious Any Taylor-Joy) is a sixties’ singer who comes to Eloise (a reliably excellent Thomasin McKenzie) in the form of dreams once Eloise starts to live in an old building. Eloise, who appears to have abilities to see beyond her reality, is immediately intrigued by the singer. A story about (women’s) dreams and how they can be crushed by society, it stylistically succeeds in portraying these women’s struggles to live the lives they desire.
3 The Invisible Man
Image via Universal Pictures
The Invisible Man 2020 reboot was quite a surprise, telling a thrilling and deeply unsettling narrative and transcending its own source material.The film tells the story of a woman that escapes her abusive relationship with a tech millionaire. A few days later, her ex-husband is found dead. When she starts to move on with her life, weird things begin happening around her. Cee then remembers what he always used to threaten her with: he would find her if she ever dared to leave, and he can be made invisible. The plot is a clear metaphor for women in abusive relationships: the denial that comes from family members and friends, the PTSD, and how society views the women who seek help; this movie hit all the marks. With a spectacular performance from Elizabeth Moss, we are transported to the mind of Cee as we follow her journey to free herself of many invisible things - including her supposed dead ex-husband.
2 Silence of the Lambs
Strong Heart Productions
Another Jodie Foster film, Silence of the Lambs, shows what is like for a woman to be in a male-dominated environment. There are various shots of Starling walking/jogging with the purpose of getting the viewer to notice the number of men who turn their heads to look at her. Even Buffalo Bill, the serial killer Starling is trying to catch, started his stalker activities by spying on women. Using filmmaking techniques, such as framing the men around Clarice - like Hannibal - in the middle of the shot while they look directly at the camera, makes us see exactly what Clarice is seeing, forcing us to be inside her reality. Silence of the Lambs tells the now-classic story of FBI agent Clarice Starling, who is hunting down the serial killer Buffalo Bill. However, to understand the killer’s mind, she will have to know how their brains work. There is no better way to do that than to talk to someone worse: professor Hannibal Lector, who will become her mentor on this quest.
1 Alien
One of the most iconic movies ever made, Alien is definitely a feminist movie. Not only because the protagonist is Ripley, the only astronaut that understands the danger her crew is in and perhaps the most iconic badass woman in cinema, but because the movie has intricate metaphors regarding sexual assault. An alien forces himself into Kane and makes him be a vessel to give birth to another alien– director Ridley Scott and writer Dan O’Bannon brilliantly transform men’s reality and make it into a woman’s; O’Bannon has even gone so far as to say, “I’m going to attack the audience. I’m going to attack them sexually,” awkwardly referring to his persistent metaphors for the sexual assault so many women face. Alien tells the story of a spaceship that finds a planet that emits a signal. Once arriving at a planet, one astronaut is attacked - by something. The crew was originally composed of seven people, but now there might be an eighth passenger on board in this sci-fi horror masterpiece.
