Rooting for a final girl in a horror movie is quite comforting, no? She is the one who crawls through blood, outsmarts the killer, and limps her way out of the wreckage. Whether she’s clutching a weapon or just her sanity, she’s our anchor. With horror always leaning into this dynamic where the villains are monstrous and morally bankrupt, we latch onto the one person who seems “good.” It’s tradition. We’ve been trained to cheer for the girl who survives. The final girl.
But every now and then, a movie flips the script and provides the ultimate twist: The final girl is not just the last one standing, but the one who fashioned the whole thing. Maybe she manipulated the killer. Maybe she was the killer. Maybe she just let it all happen and watched from the sidelines. And when the twist hits, when the person we trusted turns out to be the real villain all along, it’s actually weirdly satisfying. Because horror is about power, and these final girls took control in ways that make you take a moment to rethink everything.
So here’s to the crash-out queens. Let’s look at 10 final girls in horror who were the real villains all along.
Kate – ‘Cube 2: Hypercube’ (2002)
Cube 2: Hypercube ditches the gritty mechanical setting of the original for a sleek and sterile nightmare. In the movie, a group of strangers wakes up inside a four-dimensional cube where time, gravity, and reality all glitch like bad code. The rooms are identical, but the rules shift consistently. Among the group is Kate Filmore, a psychotherapist who seems empathetic and rational.
Kate is the one who comforts blind hacker Sarah, and tries to keep the group from turning on one another. Early on, Kate feels like she’s the moral compass. But by the end, all of that changes. When Kate makes it out of the hypercube, it is revealed that she was working with the cube’s manufacturer to give them the necklace she snatched from Sasha, which contains classified data. Her true role was that of a pawn who played everyone else to complete Phase 2 of the experiment.
Jess – ‘Triangle’ (2009)
Triangle is one of those rare horror movies that messes with your head in the best way. It starts with Jess, a single mom, joining her friends on a sailing trip to escape her chaotic life. A freak storm capsizes their boat, and they’re rescued by a massive cruise liner that seems abandoned. But it turns out, the ship isn’t empty. It is haunted by a masked killer who starts picking off the group one by one.
Jess, shaken but resourceful, tries to make sense of the madness and fights the ship’s twisted time loop. Except, it is revealed that Jess is the killer. She is stuck in a loop where she becomes the masked murderer, killing her friends over and over to reset the timeline and fix things. Later, she even kills her abusive self back home to flee with her son and causes the car crash that kills him.
Melanie – ‘Fantasy Island’ (2020)
Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island is a tropical horror remix of The Twilight Zone. It follows a group of contest winners arriving on a lush island where their deepest desires are fulfilled. But the fantasies turn sour. For instance, revenge turns into torture and romance turns into regret. Melanie Cole, played by Lucy Hale, starts off as a relatable character because her fantasy is to get revenge on her high school bully, Sloan. It is petty but understandable.
Melanie is awkward, wounded, but seems genuinely shocked when she realizes Sloan is not a hologram but a real person being tortured. Melanie even tries to save her. But then the mask slips. Turns out Melanie orchestrated the entire trip and every guest was handpicked because they played a role in the death of her crush, Nick, who died in a fire years ago. So Melanie’s fantasy was bigger annihilation, really.
Heather – ‘Texas Chainsaw 3D’ (2013)
Texas Chainsaw 3D tries to bridge the original 1974 classic with modern slasher elements. It picks up right after Sally’s escape and the death of the Sawyer clan. Decades later, Heather Miller (played by Alexandra Daddario) inherits a mysterious mansion in Newt, Texas, only to realize that she’s actually Edith Sawyer, born into the very family that was massacred. She arrives with her friends in tow, unaware of the fact that Leatherface is still alive and living in the basement. The setup is familiar for franchise fans.
A group of young adults, a creepy house, a killer with a chainsaw. Even though Heather starts off as someone seemingly innocent, someone we would expect to scream, run, and maybe survive, she ends up switching sides. After discovering her blood ties with Leatherface, she goes full Sawyer. In the final act, she tosses him a chainsaw and utters the now-infamous line, “Do your thing, cuz!” So yeah, she’s the final girl, but she’s also the heir to a bloody dynasty.
Marie – ‘High Tension’ (2003)
Directed by Alexandre Aja, High Tension is a nerve-shredding entry in the New French Extremity wave. It kicks off with Marie and her best friend Alex heading to a remote farmhouse for a quiet study weekend. But the peace is short-lived because a hulking stranger breaks in and murders Alex’s family. Marie hides, stalks the killer, and tries to rescue Alex, all while navigating gas chambers and greenhouses.
Marie is framed as this brave and loyal friend who is willing to risk everything to save Alex from a sadistic monster. Which is why the twist hits like a sledgehammer when you find out Marie is the killer. The creepy man was just a projection of her dissociative identity disorder. She’s the one who decapitates Alex’s father, slashes her mother, kills the kid brother, kidnaps Alex, and chases her with a concrete saw. She was the final girl cleaning her own mess.
Jill – ‘Scream 4’ (2011)
Scream 4 is Wes Craven’s meta revival of the franchise. Set in a post-social media world where fame is currency and trauma is content, it finds Sidney Prescott returning to Woodsboro for her book tour and finding out that a new Ghostface killer is targeting her cousin Jill and Jill’s friends. Emma Roberts plays Jill, who is introduced as the new Sidney. She is quiet and smart and caught in the crossfire. She’s the one getting creepy calls, the one losing friends, and the one we’re supposed to root for.
But Jill is not the victim. She is the architect. She plans the whole thing with her boyfriend Charlie, kills her own mother, and stabs Sidney in a bid to become the final girl. Her only motive was fame. She wanted to be the new Sidney, but without the trauma. Her line, “I don’t need friends. I need fans,” is pure millennial. And if that defibrillator scene hadn’t fried her plans, she would definitely be trending.
Mandy – ‘All the Boys Love Mandy Lane’ (2006)
This one starts like a teen-slasher with an indie edge. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane’s Mandy Lane is a reserved, newly-hot girl who is suddenly the center of attention after her summer glow. She is invited to a weekend party at a remote range to hang out with the “cool kids,” including the usual mix of horny jocks, insecure cheerleaders, and stoners. But Mandy’s vibe is saintly. She does not drink, doesn’t hook up, and seems vaguely uncomfortable with all the attention. And for most of the runtime, she plays it like a classic final girl.
But then she stabs Chloe. Like, straight-up hugs her and guts her. It is revealed that this whole time, Mandy was paired up with Emmett, the outcast who manipulated her into doing the dirty work. She planned the murders, played innocent, and then killed Emmett too when he outlived his usefulness. That final scene when she walks off with Garth, the ranch hand who still thinks she’s a victim, paints her as a pure sociopath.
Tara – ‘Shrooms’ (2007)
Shrooms is one of those mid-2000s horror flicks that tries to be edgy and different by mixing psychedelic horror with conventional elements of the slasher genre. In it, a group of college students heads into the Irish woods to hunt magic mushrooms. Tara is the shy American girl with a crush on their guide, Jake. She’s the kind of person you’d rush to protect when things go south.
Early in the movie, Tara eats a Death Bell mushroom, which is hallucinogenic nightmare fuel. She starts having visions of her friends dying, and we’re led to believe that she’s seeing the future. And when the group gets picked off one by one, a ghostly monk is tied to the lore. But there’s no monk. It’s Tara. She’s the killer, and the visions were not premonitions, they were memories. The twist lands hard because Tara genuinely believes she’s innocent until the end.
Amanda – ‘Saw II’ (2005)
By Saw II, the franchise is already deep into its twisted plays on morality. The movie follows a group of strangers waking up in a booby-trapped house, each with a dark past, and they are told they have two hours before a deadly gas kills them. Among them is Amanda Young, the only known survivor of a Jigsaw trap from the first movie. Even though she is traumatized, she seems like the one person who understands how to play the game.
You root for Amanda because she has been through hell and made it out. But as it turns out, she became Jigsaw’s apprentice. She helped design the traps, planted the clues, and protected Daniel, the detective’s son, because she knew the game’s outcome. She even locks the final door to trap Eric Matthews and watches him scream as she walks away.
Brenda – ‘Urban Legend’ (1998)
Directed by Jamie Blanks, Urban Legend is pure late ‘90s slasher comfort food. The premise is about college kids getting killed off one by one and each murder resembling a famous urban myth. There is a killer in the backseat, the microwave pet, the kidney heist. Brenda is Natalie’s bubbly best friend. She’s a little dramatic, always around but never in the spotlight, and quite thrown off by the bodies piling up.
You think she’s the sidekick who will either die tragically or help Natalie survive. Then she goes full psycho. After Natalie and Michelle caused her boyfriend’s death in a prank, Brenda is driven by revenge. She tries to fake concern and manipulates everyone and, in a final monologue, tries to remove Natalie’s kidneys, which is unhinged. Brenda was the final girl who rewrote the rules.
