Final Girl (2015) Review – Star Power, Zero Spark

I went into Final Girl with actual hope. Abigail Breslin has always been one of those actors who can carry more weight than the material sometimes deserves, and having Wes Bentley in there too felt like a decent sign. The premise sounded promising on paper: a girl who’s been trained from a young age specifically to survive what happens when a pack of rich, bored psychopaths decide to hunt women in the woods. It’s basically the “final girl” trope turned into the entire movie instead of just the ending. Cool idea, right?

Except it never really becomes anything more than that idea. The whole thing just sits there, competently made but completely lifeless. You can feel everyone involved checking boxes, strong female lead, check; attractive young killers with zero personality, check; training montage that’s supposed to make us root for her, check—but nothing ever catches fire.

The Cast Carries Nothing

Breslin does her best with what she’s given. She’s believable as someone who’s been drilled to stay calm and think three steps ahead. There are a couple of quiet moments where you see the weight of what she’s been through sitting behind her eyes, and those are probably the best parts of the whole movie. But the script never lets her do anything interesting with that. She’s tough, she’s prepared, she wins. That’s about it.

Wes Bentley is in full “I have three facial expressions and I’m using all of them” mode. He plays the mysterious guy who trains her, and he’s given almost nothing to work with beyond looking serious and saying cryptic things. The rest of the cast, led by Alexander Ludwig, feel like they wandered in from a CW show that got canceled after two episodes. They’re mean, they’re cocky, they make bad jokes, and that’s the entire personality package. You never once believe these are real people who might actually do something this unhinged. They’re just props for the final act.

Everything Feels Borrowed and Watered Down

The movie keeps trying to remind you it’s a horror film, but it never actually feels dangerous. The woods look like woods. The night scenes are dark in the “we didn’t have enough lights” way rather than the “this is unsettling” way. Except in the weird moments when it seems like there is a GIANT spot light shinging down on the actors. When the violence finally shows up, it’s quick, functional, and completely forgettable. No creativity, no real tension, just people getting stabbed or shot because the plot needs them to be dead now.

There’s an attempt at making the lead character’s preparedness the point of the movie, but because we spend so much time watching her get trained in the first half, the second half loses almost all its suspense. We already know she’s ready. We already know she’s smarter than these guys. So when she starts picking them off, it feels less like a hard-fought victory and more like watching someone complete a checklist they’ve been practicing for years. It’s efficient, but efficiency isn’t the same as exciting. Veronica is a “trained” killer but comes off sloppy at times and you wonder if she would have even stood a chance had she not drugged her targets.

The dialogue is another weak spot. Everyone sounds like they’re reading lines that were written by someone who watched a few other horror movies and thought “yeah, this is how people talk when they’re about to murder someone.” There’s no real rhythm to the conversations, no weird little human details that make you believe these characters have ever existed outside of this script.

It Had All the Pieces and Still Came Up Empty

What’s frustrating is that you can see the version of this movie that might have worked. A little more time spent making the killers feel like actual threats instead of generic assholes. A little less time on the training scenes and more on making Veronica feel like a real person who’s been damaged by what she’s been through. Some actual atmosphere instead of just “dark woods at night.” Even a slightly meaner sense of humor could have helped.

Instead we get something that feels like it was assembled from spare parts of better movies. It has the surface-level trappings of a cool, modern final-girl story, but none of the personality, none of the bite, and none of the genuine tension that makes those stories work. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a frozen dinner that looks decent on the box and tastes like nothing once you heat it up.

I kept waiting for it to get better. I kept waiting for one scene that would make me sit up and go “okay, there it is.” It never came. By the time the credits rolled I just felt kind of empty. Not angry, not disappointed in a big dramatic way—just… flat. Like I’d watched a perfectly average episode of a show I don’t particularly care about.

If you’re really in the mood for a low-stakes slasher with a female lead who can handle herself, there are a dozen better options out there that actually feel like someone cared about making them. This one had the cast and the concept, and somehow still managed to feel like nobody was particularly excited to be there. That’s the part that sticks with me the most.