Proof These (Infuriating) Horror Movie Tropes Are Changing

The topic of women in horror films is a gnarly, complicated one. On the one hand, horror features women more prominently than any other genre. According to a study conducted by Google and the Geena Davis Institute, horror is the only genre in which women have more onscreen and speaking time than men. Plus, we have horror movies to thank for some of film's most empowered heroines and badass (if a bit twisted) villains — think back to Carrie and Ellen Ripley.

On the other hand, the genre is saddled with blatant sexism, the locus of which is found in the trope of the Final Girl – and in her opposite. In classic slasher movies, the Final Girl emerges from an encounter with great evil, bloody but unbroken. Her other female friends are usually not so lucky, typically meeting their demise after having sex. As the "Sex By Death" trope goes, if a woman has sex in a horror movie, she’s doomed to die.

Has the genre moved beyond the association between sex and death? If recent films are any proof, then more and more filmmakers are revitalising the horror genre by undermining tropes like Sex By Death and the Final Girl. Here are some of the worst offenders — and ones that subvert the tropes, making room for more nuanced conceptions of sexuality.