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.