Misc
Friday the 13th Final Girls, Ranked
While the Friday the 13th franchise helped codify the trope of the final girl, no two final girls are exactly alike. So let’s take a real good look at all of the survivors of the various rampages of the Voorhees family (and Roy) through Crystal Lake and beyond, and how well they acquitted themselves both as final girls and as characters in a movie you’ve elected to generously donate between 80 and 100 minutes of your life to.
While the Friday the 13th franchise helped codify the trope of the final girl, no two final girls are exactly alike. So let’s take a real good look at all of the survivors of the various rampages of the Voorhees family (and Roy) through Crystal Lake and beyond, and how well they acquitted themselves both as final girls and as characters in a movie you’ve elected to generously donate between 80 and 100 minutes of your life to.
Every Friday the 13th Final Girl Ranked
#12 Lori Campbell (Freddy vs. Jason)
The most telling thing about Lori is that she is the only final girl on the list where I struggled to remember her face, her name, or a single thing about her. By virtue of this being a crossover between two horror movie titans, she takes a backseat in her own story once she and her friends set up the smackdown of the century.
#11 Whitney Miller (Friday the 13th 2009)
This is another Lori situation. Whitney simply isn’t that interesting, and she’s not really a central character in her own movie. Even if you’re willing to roll with the weird wrinkle of her being kidnapped by Jason at the beginning of the movie, she only technically becomes the final girl by dint of not being murdered and not for any other reason. Although she does pull off some of the most notable final girl moves from previous movies once she’s activated, she’s just not really part of the action for the majority of the runtime. More than anything, she’s here to be the damsel in distress that fuels the brooding of Jared Padalecki and his bangs.
#10 Pam Roberts (Friday the 13th: A New Beginning)
With one exception, any final girl from a movie in the Tommy Jarvis trilogy is going to rank pretty low. These are “final boy” movies through and through, and only really have final girls as a matter of tradition. Pam does have that fun moment with the chainsaw, but for the most part she is only around to slip in the mud and turn into a quivering heap whenever Jason shows up.
#9 Trish Jarvis (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter)
Trish, Tommy Jarvis’ older sister, offers the movie something of an inroad into the antics of the sexy teens staying in the house next door, but beyond that, she’s a flavorless nothing who has very little to offer either in terms of interest or her own survival. She was never going to outshine Tommy Jarvis, but she doesn’t even try.
#8 Jessica Kimble (Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday)
Jessica combines the worst attributes of all the women on the lower third of this list. In addition to barely making a blip in the narrative of her own story (it’s hard to do that when Creighton Duke is burning through the movie like someone is holding up a magnifying glass to the film reel), she is a boring character who doesn’t even have enough identifiable traits to be called one-dimensional. However, the Voorhees Legend (or whatever) says that she’s the only one who can defeat Jason, and by God she does, ceremonial dagger and all.
#7 Rennie Wickham (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan)
Honestly, Rennie is pretty useless too. She doesn’t put much effort into defeating Jason or using her weird psychic connection to his child-ghost self to her advantage. She pretty much just lets New York City’s toxic waste flood take care of him. Her position on the chart is mainly because of her glorious hair. Also, I like that they put so much work into setting up that she’s been given Stephen King’s pen, and then she stabs Jason in the eye with it. I’m a simple man.
#6 Chris Higgins (Friday the 13th Part III)
I think the final moments of Chris’ battle against Jason are quite superb, but for the most part she just runs around screaming for her boyfriend, Rick, and turning off faucets.
#5 Rowan (Jason X)
Rowan is a decent final girl, when push comes to shove! As a researcher, she has a set of skills, which don’t necessarily come in handy, but it’s nice to have skills. And she’s pretty quick on her feet when it comes to luring Jason into traps and attempting to neutralize him so others can be safe from his rampage.
#4 Megan Garris (Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives)
Megan proves that you can overcome the limitations of being a Tommy Jarvis era final girl through sheer force of personality. She doesn’t assist that much in the eventual defeat of Jason, but she’s a hell of a fun, vivacious person for Tommy to play off of, and she injects the movie with energy whenever she’s onscreen.
#3 Alice Hardy (Friday the 13th 1980)
Alice has her faults, but she is simply iconic. She can’t be number 1, because she doesn’t know she’s in a slasher movie for the majority of the run time, and her response to danger is to laboriously make coffee. But when push comes to shove, she fights for her life hard, and Mrs. Voorhees’ decapitated head is quite a trophy for her mantle.
#2 Tina Shepard (Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood)
Now, Tina’s a bit of a wet blanket when it comes to interacting with the various sexy and/or evil teens in the movie. But when it’s her and Jason, mano a mano, wow does she shine. Her telekinetic powers might be a weird swerve for the franchise, but she wields them with aplomb, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him in her wild, fierce fight for survival.
#1 Ginny Field (Friday the 13th Part 2)
Ginny Field is the final girl we should all strive to be. She’s smart, resourceful, horny (catch her in my previous article about final girls who have sex and survive their slasher movies in spite of it), and fun to be around. She uses her skills as a child psychology major to tap into Jason’s connection with his mother (which, I assume, is how every child psych major assumes they will be applying their knowledge once they’re out in the real world), she knows how to wield a pitchfork, and she’s got the calisthenics training for some solid running and hiding. She’s the total package.
Misc
Our Halloween Giveaway Is Here!
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What You’ll Win
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video
- 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Original DTS-HD MA 7.1 and 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Brand new audio commentary with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon
- Archival audio commentary with director Marcus Nispel, producer Michael Bay, executive producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, director of photography Daniel Pearl, production designer Greg Blair, art director Scott Gallager, sound supervisor Trevor Jolly and composer Steve Jablonsky
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, writer Scott Kosar, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and actors Jessica Biel, Erica Leerhsen, Eric Balfour Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel and Andrew Bryniarski
- Reimagining a Classic, a brand new interview with director Marcus Nispel
- Shadows of Yesteryear, a brand new interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl
- The Lost Leatherface, a brand new interview with actor Brett Wagner
- Masks and Massacres, a brand new interview with makeup effects artist Scott Stoddard
- Chainsaw Symphony, a brand new interview with composer Steve Jablonsky
- Chainsaw Redux: Making A Massacre, a making-of documentary
- Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield, an in-depth look at the infamous killer who inspired the character of Leatherface
- Severed Parts, a look at the cutting room floor and some of the scenes excised from the final edit
- Deleted scenes including an alternate opening and ending
- Screen tests for Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour and Erica Leerhsen
- Behind-the-scenes featurette
- Cast and crew interviews
- Theatrical trailers and TV spots
- Concept art galleries
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold
Misc
NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights: A Sneak Peek at ‘The Lost Boys’ Musical, ‘Resident Evil: Requiem,’ and More!
As soon as New York Comic Con announced that its 2025 theme would be “haunted,” I started lacing up my comfy shoes and making a beeline for the Javitz Center! Horror has always been represented at the con, but it felt fitting that it should play a central role in this year’s event at a time when the genre seems more popular than ever.
From beloved family-friendly properties like The Nightmare Before Christmas to pants-dampening titles like the upcoming Resident Evil: Requiem, horror appeared in countless shapes and forms. Here are all the best and scariest insights I gleaned from the show floor, panel rooms, and pop-ups of New York Comic Con 2025!
Our NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights
Resident Evil: Requiem Is Going to Test Your Bladder Strength
Full disclaimer: I’m not a gamer. I’m honestly pretty bad at games, which made my Resident Evil: Requiem play session all the more frightening because I was convinced that everyone around me would realize I’m a fraud. But with easy-to-grasp controls, even for a newb like me, the latest installment in the iconic horror franchise quickly sucked me in and left me on edge for entirely different reasons.
During my 30-minute session, I was introduced to FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, Requiem’s central character. She swims to consciousness to find herself strapped upside down on a gurney with a needle in her arm, siphoning her blood. After Grace managed to free herself, the controls were handed over to me to explore the creepy facility through Grace’s eyes, looking for a fuse. Some spaces were bathed in red light; others were lit only by flickering bulbs that left me white-knuckling the controller, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows and swallow me whole, not helped by Grace’s anxious, stuttering breathing in my ear.
I took a moment to appreciate how detailed video games have become since my childhood experiences playing Evil Dead: Hail to the King on the original PlayStation (seriously, you can see the dust drifting in beams of light now?!), only for the sound of movement somewhere in the facility to yank me back to the present. I renewed my frantic search for the fuse, only to run blindly into a pitch-black room and encounter something enormous that dragged me into the darkness. Sorry, Grace!
You can find out what happens next when Resident Evil: Requiem releases for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on February 27, 2026.
Megan Fox Is Among the New Cast Members in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2—And Blumhouse Hasn’t Given Up on Its Other m3gan Yet
Blumhouse made several announcements at their NYCC panel, most notably that Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body) is voicing Toy Chica in director Emma Tammi’s highly anticipated sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, coming to theaters on December 5. Other new additions to the cast include YouTuber Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, who cameoed in the first movie and will voice Toy Bonnie, and Kellen Goff, who has voiced multiple characters in the game series and will now lend his pipes to Toy Freddy.
I’m interested in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, not least because my best friend is terrified of the franchise and makes a wildly entertaining moviegoing companion—but I’m more interested in the future of another Blumhouse franchise, M3GAN. After the sequel underperformed, likely due in part to its hard genre pivot away from horror and into action territory, the future of the killer doll is uncertain. But in a special industry presentation on “The Business of Fear,” Jason Blum revealed that “we’re all working to keep M3GAN alive,” adding that Blumhouse is exploring other potential mediums before trying to resurrect her on film.
Does that mean a M3GAN video game might come our way in the future, or perhaps a TV series? I don’t know, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the silicone diva.

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
The Lost Boys: A New Musical Will Feature Flying Stunts and a Live Vampire Band
My queer heart is a sucker for musical adaptations of horror films I love, so you can be certain that I’ll be heading down to the Santa Carla Boulevard—aka Broadway’s Palace Theater—for The Lost Boys: A New Musical, which begins previews on March 27, 2026. At their NYCC panel, producer Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring franchise), director Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending), and cast members LJ Benet, Ali Louis Bourzgui, and Maria Wirries revealed why they feel Joel Schumacher’s 1987 classic translates so well to the stage, and what audiences can look forward to.
“There’s something that I see with both horror movies, musicals, and superhero movies—there’s an element of melodrama that’s really rewarding,” says Wilson, who began his career in musical theater and worked with Schumacher on the director’s 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. “Some people view it as camp, but there’s a reality of it being heightened that felt like this story cemented itself so much to being a musical.”
“They’re a biker gang, after all, and there’s a level of theatricality to that in and of itself,” says Arden. “Our biker gang also happens to play instruments.”
That’s right: the vampires will be playing instruments live on stage, which made casting twice as hard. Ali Louis Bourzgui, who plays David, the character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland in the film, reveals that he plays guitar. And that wasn’t the only unusual request in the casting call: auditions included a flying test. (Presumably wires were involved, unless Arden has found himself a real cabal of vampires in his cast.)
Other highlights that fans can look forward to include killer music from one of Arden’s favorite bands, The Rescues. You can listen to the song “Have to Have You” right now, featuring instrumentals from Slash. The director also teases that many fan-favorite moments from the film will feature in some way in the musical, including the bridge scene and, yes, even the sexy saxophone guy.
Greg Nicotero’s Guts & Glory Marks a New Challenge for a Legend of the Business
If you like looking at gnarly practical effects in horror movies, chances are you’re familiar with Greg Nicotero’s work, whether you realize it or not. The legendary SFX artist has worked on everything from George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Kill Bill and, more recently, The Walking Dead. The impressive extent of his resume was made clear at the panel “Shudder is Here to Scare the S*** Out of You,” in which almost any film mentioned by the other panelists was met by a small smile and a humble murmur of “worked on that” into the mic, often followed by a wild anecdote. Nicotero seems like the most interesting man in the world to grab a drink with, and his new horror competition show for Shudder—Guts & Glory—will let us see more of the man behind the makeup brush.
“Guts & Glory is one of the most fun times I’ve had on a show,” Nicotero says, teasing that the series is “part Sam Raimi, part Halloween Horror Nights, and part Survivor.”
In the six-episode first season, contestants are dropped into an Alabama swamp, where there’s an urban legend about an evil spirit. “One of the contestants gets possessed by the evil spirit, people start dying off, but in the meantime, they’re still competing and there’s a prize,” Nicotero explains.
Guts & Glory is effects-heavy, which was challenging to do in an unscripted series relying on real people’s real-time reactions. “You do a movie, you can cut and try it again,” Nicotero explains. “[This] was completely out of my wheelhouse and out of my comfort zone, but I’m really, really proud of it.”
Nicotero’s Creepshow was one of the first original shows to debut on Shudder, so he’s truly part of the DNA of the horror streamer, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Guts & Glory premieres on October 14 as part of Shudder’s Season of Screams programming.
Horror Short The Littles Deserves the Big-Screen Feature Treatment
Some short films are perfectly suited to their bite-sized format, while others contain the seeds of something much bigger. At the New York Premiere of The Littles, a new short written and directed by American Horror Story producer Andrew Duplessie, I could immediately see the potential for the feature film that Duplessie hopes to make.
Equal parts charming and unsettling, The Littles stars M3GAN’s Violet McGraw as a little girl with a loose floorboard in her bedroom. One night, a scuffling sound and a crack of light between the boards lead the little girl to discover that her family isn’t alone in the house…
Duplessie says The Littles was inspired by his own experiences growing up in a creaky old house with a no-doubt overactive imagination. The short features creepy-cute stop-motion animation from Anthony Scott (The Nightmare Before Christmas), puppets by Katy Strutz (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), and some truly adorable miniature sets by Aiden Creates, all blended perfectly with the live-action scenes. Check it out if it’s playing at a festival near you, and watch this space for a (fingers-crossed) future feature!

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
Disney Publishing’s New The Nightmare Before Christmas Tie-in Novel Welcomes Younger Fans into the Scary Fun
NYCC’s horror happenings weren’t all geared toward an adult audience. Disney Publishing took over Daily Provisions Manhattan West for a pop-up experience inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas, featuring themed food and drinks like a delectable Pumpkin Potion coffee that I could honestly drink all season long.
At a media and creator event in the space, I took a look at the newly released Hour of the Pumpkin Queen from New York Times best-selling author Megan Shepherd, who also wrote the official novelization of The Nightmare Before Christmas for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2023. In this new tie-in novel, Sally and her rag doll apprentice, Luna, embark on a time-bending adventure to save Jack Skellington and Halloween Town after falling through a mysterious portal.
I was gifted a copy of the book by Disney, but all opinions are my own here. I’m looking forward to giving it a read during the inevitable Halloween hangover that takes place in November, before likely passing it on to my young nieces when they’re old enough. It’s a full novel, not a picture book, so definitely geared more toward a YA audience, but between the beautiful artwork on the cover and the seasonal theme, it might just be the perfect gift for the budding horror lover in your life.
That’s a wrap on New York Comic Con 2025! Be sure to bookmark Horror Press if you haven’t already so you never miss our coverage of conventions, festivals, and more.





