Shocktober 2026 - The Final Girls (2015)
A word of introduction and explanation…
At the end of Shocktober 2025, I thought that it and I were done. I felt we’d had our day and it seemed time to step away after what I thought was a pretty good, long run that spanned 19 years. I took my leave quietly, but that quiet spell didn’t last, and both the site and the podcast returned five months later thanks purely to you, the audience who kept showing up at the site. Now it’s midsummer as I write this, and time to get to work on Shocktober 2026. This is the 20th year I’ve run my annual online horror movie festival and I was trying to come up with ideas for a theme, which I enjoy doing from time to time.
After a while, I still had no idea I that was really happy with, so I started trawling the shelves for likely films without a theme – then the inspiration hit. Somehow, I was finding movies with a loose common thread without realising until I reviewed the list I had compiled.
So, for Shocktober number 20, your 13 Screams of Halloween will feature the tried, trusted and familiar horror movie tropes and conventions – but maybe not as you’ve seen them before. We have some excellent ones, we have some truly cringeworthy B movies that I went looking for and bought them – on purpose and one legendary item sooooo bad, it’s an instant legend.
As usual, I’ll be bringing you these throughout October, culminating on October 31.
Boils and Ghouls, I give you Shocktober 2026: Alternative Takes
Enjoy…
I thought we’d kick off with a slasher movie, specifically a summer camp slasher movie, very much in the style of Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp and The Burning. The Final Girl in these films is the one last survivor, the one with vanquishes the killer (until the sequel, at least) and survives. Now one of the things you have to do to be a final girl is you can’t be promiscuous, and you have to be virtuous and virginal. Wholesome even. If you’re slutty, you’re a goner.
The Final Girls was written by Joshua John Miller, whose father the actor Jason Miller appeared as Father Karras in The Exorcist (1973) and grew up watching his father die onscreen, which inspired the concept of this movie.
As the film opens, we see Max Cartwright (Tessa Farmiga) sits in a car, as her mother attends a film audition. Like many teen horror/slasher actresses, Amanda Cartwright (Malin Akerman) is stuck in the realisation that her fame was fleeting and her appearance as Nancy in the cult slasher Camp Bloodbath is as good as her acting career would get. She and her daughter are broke. One their way home, they’re involved in a road accident and Amanda dies.
(You might be wondering at this point where the comedy is in this horror comedy.)
Three years later.
It’s the anniversary of Amanda’s death, and Max is with her friends Gertie (Alia Shawkat) and Chris (Alexander Ludwig) when Gertie’s stepbrother Duncan (Thomas Middleditch) horror movie fanatic shows up and persuades Max to attend a double bill of Camp Bloodbath and its sequel he’s arranging at the local cinema. At the screening, they meet Vicki (Nina Dobrev) who is Chris’s possessive ex.
During the screening, a fire breaks out, causing panic. Exits are blocked, Max cuts her way through the screen, guiding her friends to safety. Except…
They’re now actually IN the movie.
They become aware of this when they see the same yellow VW van a few times, containing characters from the film, asking for directions – and the scene replays every 92 minutes.
Eventually, they tell the film characters that they’re new counsellors also on their way to the camp and hitch a ride with them. Now, of course our lot know what’s going to happen, so they let things take their course as they would in the film and allow some characters to die without trying to intervene. They’ve been spotted by the masked slasher, Billy Murphy but he just stares at them without attacking. This leads Duncan into a false sense of security. He believes they’re safe because they’re not part of the film – and tries to take a selfie with Billy. Bad decision. He is stabbed for his trouble.
The group are on a mission to keep the film characters from having sex, because as soon as they do – Billy turns up and kills them. Max in particular is anxious to keep Nancy alive, seeing she’s played by her mother Amanda. One of their attempts to try and keep the group alive is telling them that the urban legend of Billy Murphy is real, and he IS coming to kill them. All this does is panic the characters. Kurt (Adam Devine) and Paula (Chloe Bridges) roar off in her Pontiac only to hit a still-alive Duncan (maybe his theory held) and pile into a totem pole, dying instantly.
They realise that characters who survived in the film are now dying, so the events aren’t as inevitable as they thought. Nancy can be kept alive and survive the film. In fact, they can actually kill Billy and save a few lives. Among the group, Max is the only virgin, and she therefore has to be the one to get Billy’s machete and kill him with it. If she does that, then perhaps, somehow, they can get to the end of the movie and find their way back to the real world and maybe take Nancy with them, and she could be whoever she wants in our world.
They boobytrap the cabin, using one of the characters as a lure, which ends badly with Tina (Angela Trimbur) who’s the decoy, tripping in a panic and ending headfirst in a bear trap. Gertie and Vicki are also killed, Max, Nancy and Chris try to escape into the black and white flashback which tells the story of Billy’s disfigurement – but Chris is stabbed and Nancy is kidnapped by Billy and taken to his hideout.
Max tracks Nancy to the hideout, knowing where it is from her repeated viewings of the film. Both women fight Billy, but Max is wounded. They retreat to a chapel, where the last stand is to be taken.
Nancy goes out into the open to lure Billy with a seductive dance, while Max waits to kill him in an ambush. Max explains to Nancy that in the real world, she is her daughter. Nancy now realises that in order for Max to really become the final girl, she must sacrifice herself for her daughter. Max decapitates Billy after he kills Nancy.
Chris now wounded, arrives as the credits roll in the night sky.
Max wakes up in a hospital, surrounded by her friends. Was it all a dream?
No – they hear Billy’s Friday the 13th-esque music cue as he comes crashing through the glass doors as the title appears in front of them; Camp Bloodbath 2: Cruel Summer.
They’re trapped in the sequel.
Next time, a new take on a classic tale – it’ll have you in stitches.