If you’ve ever wondered what Dexter would look like if it were directed by an Instagram influencer with a ring light fetish and no sense of pacing, look no further than Final Girl. Directed by Tyler Shields — yes, the fashion photographer known more for shooting famous people holding fake severed heads than for directing movies — this 2015 action-horror-thriller is the cinematic equivalent of a protein shake left in the sun: overly stylized, faintly nauseating, and weirdly full of self-confidence.
Abigail Breslin, bless her, stars as Veronica, a young woman trained since childhood to hunt and kill misogynistic high school boys who get their kicks from murdering young women in the woods. On paper, this sounds like Kill Bill meets Heathers with a side of The Hunger Games. In practice, it’s Lifetime Movie Network: The Acid Trip Edition.
1. From Little Miss Sunshine to Little Miss Serial Killer
The movie begins like every good revenge story: with a tragic orphan and a sketchy middle-aged man offering her a job that probably violates several child labor laws. Enter Wes Bentley as William, a man so dead-eyed and soft-spoken that you’d think he escaped from an acting class where everyone was told to “channel their inner damp sock.”
He takes in five-year-old Veronica after her parents die and decides to train her to kill, because apparently adoption laws have really loosened up since the apocalypse. His training regimen seems to consist of sitting in dimly lit rooms, whispering cryptic nonsense, and injecting her with DMT to “confront her fears.” Because nothing says “healthy mentorship” like drugging your ward and calling it emotional growth.
By the time Veronica grows up, she’s not just ready to kill — she’s ready to pout while doing it.
2. The Boys Are Not All Right
The villains of Final Girl are four high school sociopaths who dress like they’ve been kicked out of a GQ photo shoot for excessive cologne use. Led by Jameson (Alexander Ludwig), they meet at diners to pick their next female victim, speaking in dialogue that sounds like it was written by an AI fed 500 episodes of Riverdale.
Their group is supposed to embody toxic masculinity, but mostly they just embody bad haircuts and poor decision-making. They call themselves hunters, but their idea of hunting is taking girls to the woods and giggling about it like hormonal camp counselors.
When Veronica volunteers as their next target, it’s not a question of if she’ll kill them — it’s how long we have to sit through their dialogue first.
3. The Aesthetic: 1950s Noir Meets Axe Body Spray
Tyler Shields clearly loves his lighting — and by “loves,” I mean he’s in a committed relationship with it. Every frame of Final Girl looks like it was shot through a vat of gold-filtered perfume. The entire film is drenched in artificial gloss, as if someone said, “What if Sin City had less budget and more beige?”
The setting is timeless, allegedly — a weird hybrid of 1950s diners, modern SUVs, and dream-sequence fog that suggests the apocalypse came for logic first. The costumes are sharp, the lipstick’s brighter than the script, and the trees glow like they’ve been sponsored by Instagram filters.
It’s stylish, sure — but in the same way that a taxidermied peacock is stylish. It’s pretty to look at until you realize it’s dead inside.
4. Abigail Breslin Deserved Better
Abigail Breslin tries — oh, she tries. You can see her fighting for the soul of this movie, delivering lines about justice and fear with the conviction of someone who’s seen Silence of the Lambs too many times. Unfortunately, she’s also saddled with a script that confuses empowerment with aestheticized violence.
Veronica isn’t a character; she’s a concept. She’s less a woman on a mission and more a Pinterest board titled “Hot Girl Revenge Vibes.” Her dialogue alternates between pseudo-philosophical monologues and awkward silences that stretch longer than Wes Bentley’s career choices.
Breslin sells the physicality, but there’s only so much you can do when your fight scenes look choreographed by a yoga instructor on Ambien.
5. The Kill Scenes: Bored to Death
You’d expect a movie about a trained killer taking down a pack of misogynistic psychos to deliver at least one satisfying kill. But Final Girl manages to make even murder feel monotonous.
Each death plays out like an avant-garde perfume commercial: slow motion, mood lighting, and camera angles that scream “artsy” while your brain screams “why is this still happening?” Veronica dispatches her prey with cold precision, but the action lacks rhythm, tension, or even basic physics.
Daniel hallucinates panda-headed men before getting axed. Nelson sees his mom, kisses her, and promptly gets his skull crushed by a rock. Yes, you read that right — a movie that features a boy making out with his imaginary mother still manages to be boring. That’s an accomplishment.
By the time the final showdown rolls around, you’re rooting for someone — anyone — to die just to end the scene.
6. Wes Bentley: The Human Tranquilizer
Wes Bentley’s William might be the least charismatic assassin trainer in cinematic history. His entire performance consists of standing in shadows, frowning meaningfully, and talking about “the mission” like he’s narrating a meditation app for sociopaths.
His chemistry with Breslin is… uncomfortable. The film tiptoes around the idea that she has romantic feelings for him, but watching it play out feels like being trapped at dinner with two people who definitely shouldn’t be dating.
If this is what passes for mentorship in the assassin community, it’s no wonder half of them end up emotionally stunted.
7. The “Empowerment” Problem
Final Girl wants desperately to be a feminist revenge thriller. Unfortunately, it has the emotional depth of a cologne commercial.
Instead of giving Veronica complexity or inner conflict, the film dresses her up like a noir fantasy and calls it “empowerment.” The camera lingers lovingly on her as she dispatches the boys one by one, but it’s not celebrating her strength — it’s fetishizing it.
By the time she hangs the final killer, Jameson, while wearing a cocktail dress and perfect eyeliner, it feels less like justice and more like a Vogue shoot gone off the rails.
8. Pancakes and Existential Dread
After the blood, drugs, and hallucinations, the movie ends with Veronica and William at a diner eating pancakes. It’s supposed to be poetic — a callback to their first meeting and a metaphor for completion. Instead, it plays like the most awkward brunch date in cinematic history.
“Good job killing those teens,” William says, probably. “Pass the syrup.”
It’s a strangely flat ending for a film that already looked like it was shot on a flat surface. No emotion, no catharsis, just two sociopaths carbo-loading after a night of murder.
9. The Tyler Shields Experience
As a director, Tyler Shields brings his photographer’s eye — and unfortunately, that’s all he brings. Every frame is perfectly composed, but nothing connects. He’s obsessed with the image of violence, not its meaning. It’s like he Googled “what makes a movie stylish” and just copy-pasted the list.
The result? A film that looks like it’s constantly posing for a magazine spread called Murder, But Make It Fashion.
10. Final Thoughts: Pretty Dead Things
Final Girl could have been something. It could have been a sharp, subversive revenge thriller about trauma, conditioning, and reclaiming agency. Instead, it’s an empty shell — a glossy, beige fever dream where empowerment means killing in heels and looking good while doing it.
It’s not scary. It’s not thrilling. It’s not even particularly gory. It’s just… there, pouting at you in soft focus.
The saddest part? You can almost see the movie it wanted to be — the stylish female-led revenge story with bite. But somewhere between the lighting setups and the slow-motion, it lost its soul.
Rating: 3/10 — It’s like watching a perfume ad directed by a sociopath. Beautiful, lifeless, and smells faintly of wasted potential.
