How Sidney Prescott Redefined the “Final Girl” Trope

Most effective horror movie villains have something in common: indestructibility. Their imperviousness is what makes them most scary. Defeating most horror villains with physical strength alone is useless; you can’t outmuscle a hulking psycho. But, these movies show us, you can outsmart one.

And who usually does the outsmarting? The Final Girl, or the last character alive left to stop the villain once and for all. For years, however, “outsmart” may have been too strong a word to describe how the Final Girl survived. The Final Girl trope arguably started with Jamie Lee Curtis’ 1978 performance as Laurie Strode in the Halloween franchise — a hapless teenager who more-or-less lucked her way through a violent Halloween night with the murderous Michael Meyers.

But that trope changed in no small part thanks to actress Neve Campbell’s portrayal of Final Girl Sidney Prescott in the 1996 film Scream. Sidney embodied the way a number of filmmakers in the 1990s tried to reinvigorate the horror genre into something more self-aware and meta after the 1980s saw an overflowing number of sequels and schlocky slasher films. Sidney redefined the Final Girl archetype into a character who, despite great loss and anguish, isn’t subjected to the weight of her trauma. She seemed more aware of the stakes, knew the rules of the world, and could roll with the punches and punch back just as hard.

The Final Girls of the late 1970s and 1980s weren’t useless by comparison, but rather it was clear they’d never seen a horror movie: They split from the group, followed the weird noise, and, as Laurie Strode did, stabbed the killer with a knitting needle and assumed they were dead. For these girls, survival was something of a miracle, but Sidney Prescott earned her survival.

Yes, Sidney still made mistakes; in Scream, she runs upstairs, away from any exits, while a killer is in her house. But the difference is that her missteps don’t fly in the face of logic like her predecessors’ do. Sidney’s effectiveness as a character is heavily based upon the fact that she does make wrong calls just as anyone else would in a horrifying situation, and still manages to persevere and survive. She’s not going to creep into the cellar to uncover a spooky noise; she will, however, trust the wrong people, get overly profane when she’s frustrated, and jump to imprecise conclusions like the rest of us. However, she refuses to let those mistakes define her.

Sidney was also one of the first major female characters in horror history to both have sex and survive the movie. One of the longest-running (and most misogynistic) tropes in the horror genre is the likelihood that sexually active female characters die. Scream acknowledges as much in its own dialogue: “There are certain rules one must abide by to survive a horror movie, for instance, number one: You can never have sex,” as Randy (played by Jamie Kennedy) explains during the climactic party of Scream. And yet, Sidney has sex. In fact, she has sex with the movie’s killer before learning he is a murderous psychopath. By rule of the genre, it’s about the most egregious mistake a character can make, and yet Sidney is able to overcome it.

Over the course of five movies, Sidney is gaslit, maimed, and manipulated by the world around her. Sidney is the conduit for the audience, who, like her, are trying to figure out who the murderer is. Sidney, like the audience, is fallible; she guesses incorrectly and trusts the wrong people. Yet she never doubts her own cunning nor her ability to solve the mystery and survive. Even when her deduction skills result in being stabbed by lovers and loved ones, she never doubts her abilities as a fighter. She’s nearly killed by her niece in Scream 4, her half-brother attempts to murder her in Scream 3, her curiosity and mistrust get her boyfriend and her best friend killed in Scream 2, and in Scream, as stated, she actually sleeps with the killer.

There isn’t a realm of Sidney’s life — not family, not romance, nor academia — that isn’t infected by the trauma inflicted upon her when she was a teenager in Scream. She’s a reluctant hero, yearning for normality and peace. She remains the wry, effervescent girl we met in 1996, while having embraced the rigidity that her life requires, walking the line between hope and resilience. When Sidney shoots the killer, her then-ex-boyfriend, in the head at the end of Scream, it’s brutal, yet necessary. She’s no longer the sociable young woman who had boys climbing into her bedroom window, but a young woman who’ll take full measures to save herself.

In Scream 4, we meet Sidney on a book tour, where she’s finally taken control of the narrative of her own life, and is attempting to tell her story her way, instead of remaining at the mercy of her trauma. At the beginning of Scream 3, Sidney’s house is equipped with an intricate security system, and by the end of the movie, we watch as Sidney, having taken agency over her own sense of safety, leaves her front door open and unlocked. By all accounts Sidney should be afraid of the world, unable to love and unable to trust, and yet, in Scream 5, she is a happily married mother of two. What’s more, in the most recent iteration in the franchise, Sidney gets involved in the mystery on her own terms, instead of having the terror thrust upon her.

What is perhaps the most enduring facet of Sidney is her relatability. Audiences have watched her transform from a “girl-next-door,” sneaking kisses from her boyfriend, to a college student navigating her future. They watched her develop from a fearful adult paralyzed by her own trauma, into a loving mother who’s taken agency of her own story. Now, it’s likely that most viewers haven’t had to tangle with a mask-wearing, knife-wielding killer five times across 25 years, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that Sidney’s story isn’t universal. What’s important is that we all see ourselves in this fallible, puzzling heroine, and whether or not we always like what we see, we know that, like Sidney, we too will survive. Perhaps that’s why audiences love Sidney so much, because she’s proof — albeit fictional —that no matter your trauma or missteps, you can always be the architect of your own life.