Picture any traditional horror movie, and the image that first comes to mind more than likely involves a pretty girl being chased through the woods by a man with a big knife.  All too often, women in horror films are highly sexualized and portrayed as weak, unable to do more than run, scream, and die. And, in the American horror film, women are often killed as punishment for their sexuality—a common slasher film trope involves women being brutally murdered directly after having on-screen sex. In opposition to this is the ubiquitous Final Girl, who is invariably virginal, and is therefore allowed to survive until the end credits.  This makes for a pretty clear message: only “pure” women deserve to live, and having a sexual presence merits punishment—all sluts must die.

These commonly held tropes and archetypes illustrate how, until recently, the horror genre was largely male-driven and reflective of the fear and anxiety surrounding female sexuality. However, it has begun to rethink these male-centered narratives, with films like Jennifer’s Body, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Midsommar, and Us subverting the classic horror model of women being terrorized by making them the terrorizers. These films have made strides in eliminating one-dimensional depictions of women in the horror genre, allowing space for female spectatorship and empowerment.

This subgenre of horror was given a name by Barbara Creed, whose 1993 book The Monstrous-Feminine set the parameters for the horror genre’s positioning of female villains.  She says, “I have used the term ‘monstrous-feminine’ as the term ‘female-monster’ implies a simple reversal of ‘male monster’...the phrase ‘monstrous-feminine’ emphasizes the importance of gender in the construction of her monstrosity,” asserting that the fear factor of the monstrous-feminine comes from her sexuality and often caters to male-driven cinematic pleasure.  Films like Teeth, in which the protagonist’s realization that her vagina bites back enables her to protect herself from a parade of attackers, play on castration anxieties but do little to provide depth and agency to their monstrous women.

It’s worth noting that the protagonist’s story in Teeth, written and directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, was told from a male perspective.  One factor separating the problematic nature of the monstrous-feminine that Creed describes from movies that actually subvert male-dominated narratives in a productive way may well be the experiences of the writers and directors.  Maria San Filippo, an Emerson College professor teaching a seminar on women filmmakers, explains, “Women-directed approaches to horror have generally proven more willing and able to humanize women characters (whether they’re the ones terrorizing or being terrorized) which I believe makes for more interesting as well as empowering representations, though this isn’t exclusively the province of the many outstanding recent horror films made by women.”  

Jennifer’s Body was written and directed by women, for women, and plays on the way women’s bodies are stolen from them, often through violence.  Jennifer is sexualized from the start, and often uses her sexuality to get what she wants.  Because of her immediate introduction as a sexual being, she would normally be the first girl murdered in a horror movie; in a sense, she is, as members of a Satanic rock band sacrifice her in a ritual for fame and fortune.  However, she comes back to life as a powerful demon, and begins using her sexuality to lure men in and eat them.  This represents a refreshing turn of events: men have taken Jennifer’s body away from her for their own gain, inadvertently granting her the power to exact revenge on men who have wronged her.  She survives because of her sexuality, and continues to use it to add to her physical power over men, rather than being punished for it.  A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, plays with a similar kind of irony.  The title suggests that the audience should be fearing for the safety of the girl in question—of course, a girl walking home alone at night is immediate cause for concern.  Here, however, The Girl roams the streets without needing to fear for her safety, and is the perpetrator of violence rather than the victim of it.  

In the past several years, some horror films have taken the genre even further in its rejection of male-dominated narratives, creating a model of the monstrous-feminine that is not defined in terms of her sexuality.  Ari Aster has shown a surprising ability to effectively convey aspects of femininity and womanhood: 2019’s Midsommar celebrates female power and rage, punishes men who lack empathy and respect, and allows femininity and monstrosity to happily coexist.  In the last moments of the film, the protagonist, Dani, smiles triumphantly as she watches the men who dismissed and gaslighted her burn, knowing that she has taken back agency over her life.  

In Jordan Peele’s Us, neither Adelaide Wilson or her doppelganger Red (both played by Lupita Nyong’o) play into gendered tropes normally seen in horror protagonists and antagonists.  Both are mothers, both are products of social injustice, and both force viewers to reconsider the traditional categorization of woman-as-monster vs. woman-as-victim by occupying a hazy middle ground between and outside of the two.  Neither are defined by their sexuality at any point in the film, suggesting something much nearer to the “role reversal of the ‘male monster’” that Barbara Creed discounted.

The monstrous-feminine provides female viewers with a figure to identify with that does more than look hot and manage to survive until the credits roll.  Emerson junior Tiffany Carbon explains, “Women in film are often mistreated or dumbed down, so it always feels really empowering to see a sinister female villain that takes pride in her rage and power.”  These female villains celebrate the link between womanhood and monstrosity, making the Final Girl synonymous with the monstrous-feminine to bring the genre to new heights.  They reject the notion of the one-dimensional female villain and celebrate sexuality without making it a site of terror and violence, turning the vapid scream queen of traditional horror into the thing to be feared.