Before you run to your My Bloody Valentine rewatches and don your creepy Cupid masks to adore your significant other in, Horror Press Reader, let’s sit down and talk about our feelings. Or rather, the feelings of fictional people, and what we can learn from them.

The Chucky franchise at large is a well-loved one here at Horror Press; we have the episode-by-episode recaps to prove it. So today, we’ve compiled some relationship advice from the most emotionally stable people I can imagine. Which is to say, doll serial killers and their horribly traumatized victims.

What better sample of people is there, really?

Jake and Devon: Communication Is Key, But If It Doesn’t Unlock Any Doors Does It Matter?

Chucky was a show struck down in its prime. Just as we were getting to a pretty cool spot with our main protagonists trapped in dolls, and everyone’s favorite couple in horror renewing their vows to do no good, SyFy yanked it away from us by failing to lock in on a fourth season renewal.

Among its many plotlines was the very tumultuous relationship between main characters Jake and Devon, the young couple who were united through a love of true crime and a hatred of Charles Lee Ray. But one of their recurring issues throughout the show is that, despite the multiple scenes where they sit down with each other and communicate their feelings amid the horrors going on, they eventually regress to their previous relationship status of mildly uncomfortable.

They don’t seem to be getting a better understanding of each other, so it begs the question: how much progress is really being made here by just communicating if you don’t actively try to mend your issues? Talking things out is fine, but actions speak louder than words.

Chucky Trio: Love Of Self Can Become Love of Others

Curse of Chucky is probably the most underrated of the films in the Child’s Play franchise, and it’s in no small part thanks to the fun developments in lore that it has to offer. Key among these is the idea of Chucky using Damballa’s magic to split his soul between multiple dolls simultaneously, which has since become a staple of the franchise and a recurring plot point.

Am I kind of implying here Charles Lee Ray’s army of doll clones are a polycule in their own right? Yes, but we don’t have enough time to unpack that. The point is that the relationship between these three dolls is one of discovery, and learning to love yourself. By learning to love his self-image and enjoy his own company, Buzzcut Chucky finds emotional fulfillment and a renewed sense of purpose with the help of his two clone compatriots.

He gets beaten to death shortly thereafter, but if you’re not being hunted by Andy Barclay, you can take this lesson without fear. So, embrace who you are so you can better embrace your partner!

Jesse and Jade: Sometimes You Just Have To Wake Up and Break Up

Fiction is full of famous couples who make their relationship problems everyone else’s. Christine and Erik from The Phantom of the Opera. Magneto and Professor X from the X-Men. Even Kano and Kabal from Mortal Kombat (again, I don’t have the time to unpack that).

But do you know who isn’t on that list? Jesse and Jade from Bride of Chucky, the incredibly grating and incredibly immature duo that aggravates the audience with their befuddling relationship choices the whole runtime, only to somehow survive the entire film. And it doesn’t matter that they walk away with their arms around each other at the end, you know as soon as they get back to New Jersey they’re going to be making everyone’s lives miserable again in like two weeks, at MOST.

Despite it being a popular turn of phrase nowadays to say you don’t owe anybody anything, you do, in fact, owe them some form of peace. The lesson here is simple: for the sake of your sanity, and the sanity of the people in your lives, sometimes you just have to break up. Toxic relationship that makes no sense? Break up. Can’t communicate to save your lives? Break up. Just being downright annoying? WAKE UP AND BREAK UP.  

Nica and Tiffany: Lack of Follow-Through Can Leave A Relationship Going In Circles

One of the more controversial pairings on this list, given the nature of their relationship, involved one of them being possessed by the spirit of their evil father and then having their legs chopped off by their pseudo-lover; you might wonder what lessons are to be gleaned from this duo.

As the series goes on, Nica fails at the finish line every time she has Tiffany in her clutches. Vengeance is at hand! Until it isn’t. Which after the first few times, you would think it wasn’t her fault, but by the time she’s doing Three Stooges pratfalls in a prison parking lot, it really does feel like Nica herself has performance anxiety when it comes to taking out her nemesis. And you can’t say it’s about not being able-bodied; she survived Chucky and Tiffany without having the ability to walk multiple times!

The bottom line is, if you plan to take someone out, you’ve got to follow through. Whether it’s a date night or an assassination attempt, you’ve got to show the dedication and the drive to make things work. Otherwise, you’ll be left going in circles with little to show for it; you’ll go from disappointing others, to flat out disappointing yourself.

Chucky and Tiffany: Sometimes Relationships Are A Mystery—And Sometimes They’re Better Off That Way

And of course, like with every relationship advice article, we have one that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Chucky and Tiffany are the spokespeople for toxic relationships in horror. They rise, they work together, they bicker, they murder each other or have someone murder the other on their behalf, and then it all starts over again. So why does it work so well? The craziest thing is that they’re ultimately happy. They’re like extremophiles, swimming in the toxic waste that is their own love. They make grand gestures of love for each other; they even renew their vows. They bring out the best from each other whenever they’re together.

I like to think part of it is treating their lives like it’s their last, even when voodoo magic means they’re absolutely coming back to life. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter if others understand, or if your relationship makes sense to everyone else. What matters is that it works for you and makes you happy. Protect your peace, and protect your love. Because at the end of the day, it’s all we got.

Oh, and before I forget, a very happy Valentine’s Day to all our Horror Press fans out there! And don’t murder anyone, I don’t care how in love you are.  

For “Fatal Attraction” month at Horror Press, I really felt that we needed to further investigate the “sex = death” trope in modern horror cinema, particularly slasher movies. The connection between sex and death in slashers, and virginity and survival, has been discussed by some of our leading academics, from Carol J. Clover to Randy Meeks. And it’s true that many slasher movie final girls are virgins. Or at least, that their survival is linked to them not being distracted by indulging in the same base desires for hooking up, smoking dope, etc. as everyone else around them. Frankly, I think that an ability to pay attention is really their strongest attribute on average, but that’s not fun enough to write essays about, I guess.

Anyhoo, there is a plethora of final girls, even in iconic slasher movies, who do have sex and get to live. Some come from movies that are intentionally bucking this trope, and some star in movies that came out during the time when the trope was being firmly cemented. Here are nine of them. They are ranked, because it’s a list, but very loosely. I organized them mainly by how much them having sex figures into the story or feels like it “matters” in a historical context.

8 Horror Movies Where the Final Girl Has Sex

#8 Jade Kincaid in Bride of Chucky (1998)

I’ve tried to limit this list to characters who have explicitly had sex that is either part of the narrative or directly addressed in the dialogue. To my recollection, neither of these things are true of Jade, but she gets married to her horny boyfriend then they wake up in bed together in the Niagara Falls hotel, and they seem mighty comfortable with the amount of closeness that they’ve been able to share on their deadly road trip, even with Chucky and Tiffany breathing down their necks. So I’m gonna count her.

#7 Jess in Black Christmas (1974)

Jess came into the picture a good half-decade before the slasher rules were really codified, which is why she’s ranked a little lower. And frankly, the implications of the final scene make it hard to claim that she “survived” the movie. But she’s still a final girl in an iconic proto-slasher, and her storyline (and one of the main reasons that her boyfriend is a suspect) involves her arguing about wanting to get an abortion. Zygotes don’t just come out of nowhere, y’all.

#6 Jessica Kimble in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

Jessica Kimble’s situation is a double whammy. Not only does she have a baby with her ex, the total drip Steven, her horrible new boyfriend Robert later brags on the phone about having had sex with her after stealing her mother’s body from the morgue. She may not know how to pick ‘em, but she is sexually active and is one of the finalest final girls there is, considering she sends Jason Voorhees (and the entire Friday the 13th franchise) straight to hell.

#5 Laurie Strode in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998)

Now, this is notable because Laurie Strode is one of the characters who first cemented the “virginal final girl” trope, whether rightly or wrongly. There’s something of a question as to whether she’s actually a virgin or if she’s just better at babysitting than her terrible friends. But her triumphant return in Halloween H20 proves once and for all that she has had sex with, well, somebody, because she spit out a teenage kid with terrible bangs in the meantime. I secretly hope the father is Jimmy from Halloween II, but if wishes were fishes, every Halloween fan could open a sushi restaurant.

#4 Maxine Minx in X (2022)

Maxine Minx stars in a porno movie and survives Pearl’s murderous onslaught so hard that the sequel is named after her. Now that’s power!

#3 Alice Johnson in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

In addition to the Dream Master’s unborn child being central to the storyline of the sequel, the conception of said child is depicted in the opening credits, which is mainly just shots of writhing flesh that are so close up you have no idea what body part you’re actually looking at. But if that’s not sex, I couldn’t possibly begin to tell you what it is.

#2 Ginny Field in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1980)

Ginny Field hooking up with her boyfriend Paul (while the peeping Crazy Ralph gets garroted with barbed wire, natch) in the early going of the movie is important in a variety of ways. First of all, Friday the 13th was the franchise that most dominated the pantheon of 1980s slasher filmmaking, cementing the rules of the slasher formula more than any other group of movies. The fact that one of their earliest final girls more or less explicitly had sex just goes to show that the trope already had cracks in its foundation from the beginning. And OK, technically, she just makes out super hard with Paul, and then it cuts to the next morning, but she’s surprised when she wakes up, and he’s not still in bed with her. The fact that they had sex is simple cinematic language, babyyyyyyy!

The second is that, not only is she a final girl who has sex, she is one of the best final girls out there, using every tool at her disposal to protect herself from Jason: her intellect, her strength, her skill with tools, and so much more.

#1 Sidney Prescott in Scream (1996)

Scream is the movie that helped fully cement the “virginal final girl” trope with Randy’s big speech in front of a paused Halloween, but it simultaneously turns that trope on its head by having iconic final girl Sidney not only have sex, but (spoiler) have sex with one of the killers! And not only did she survive Scream, she survived Scream 2, Scream 3, Scream 4, the other Scream, and… I guess we’ll have to see about Scream 7, but the gal has a hell of a track record.