“Final Girl” (2015)  Directed by Tyler Shields. Starring Abigail Breslin, Wes Bentley, Logan Huffman. It’s the 1950’s. Veronica (Abigail Breslin) is trained to be a living weapon. When a group of douche bags that hunt down blondes decide to make her their next target, the hunters become the hunted. Music by Marc Canham, who composed scores for video games such as “Infamous: Second Son” and “Far Cry 2.”  The film uses instrumental music throughout, which is very effective and adds to the atmosphere.

“People die all the time.”

A little girl, Veronica, is talking to someone called William. Is he a cop, a therapist? No. He’s something else. Something much worse. He’s a “handler”, someone who trains killers.  A bad man killed his wife and daughter, and he found Veronica after her parents died, and decided to make her a living weapon to go after bad people who hurt the innocent. 

He’s testing her to see if she’s clever and smart, to see if she’s a viable candidate for training. She can solve mazes and puzzles fast and has a photographic memory. She can remember the bathroom in her house perfectly.  Once Veronica passes the tests, he tells her that she’s going to be trained for a job that most people can’t handle. You have to be special to do it. And Veronica is that kind of special. The crazy kind!

12 Years Later

William takes Veronica to a lake. They’re in a canoe.  He’s training her to chase someone without shoes on. Ouch! 

“Avoid the water,” her handler says, “You can lose a fight if you’re in the water.”

He makes her run back to the car and he paddles to shore to join her.

“The one with the most will is the strongest”,  says William as he chokes her. “Defend yourself.”

She flips tables on him and chokes him until he faints.

They continue to train, he says to her the boys know how to fight and kill, and they will be armed. She has to be smarter than them, and faster.

 

“Make your face the last thing they see.”

Veronica and William are in a bar, she’s going to talk with a person who has a brown sweater and they end up in the bathroom; first kissing and then she chokes him to death.

It cuts to the bad boys in the diner. The boys are: Jameson, Daniel, Nelson and Shane.

One of them asks a girl, “Are you ready for the time of your life?”

Next scene has her running in fear from the boys. They’re yelling and chasing after her. One of them has an axe, another a gun. One of them shoots her and she falls.

Meanwhile, William and Veronica are in a hotel room. She lays next to him because she’s cold, then she says to him “Train me.”

Veronica is strapped to a chair while her trainer injects her something that will allow her to face her fears.

He says before leaving, “You will see the truth,” and she starts to have visions from the past. After a while she calls for William and he says to her “You’ve failed.”  This was part of the hallucinations. 

This was done to her to see if she can be focused and sharp in any condition,  and she passes. William tells her she’s ready for the final test.

The boys have killed ten or more girls; they’re incapable of empathy. 

Veronica talks with the girlfriend of  Shane, and she says that doesn’t know if her boyfriend likes his friends more than her. They act like a wolf pack, tearing everything to shreds.

 “Live today like you’re going to die tomorrow.” is the phrase the Veronica lives by.

Veronica goes back to the car and mentions to William they’re falling apart and that she’s going to enjoy this.

She meets up with the leader of the boys, Jameson, in the diner. They talk for a bit after that he asks her on a date. He asks her  to wear red lipstick and have clean hair. (creepy!) They only kill blondes for some reason. Kind of like a group of serial killers. 

The boys are soulless monsters. Shane says I love you to his girlfriend in a serious tone before leaving. Another one of them is talking with his mom while he eats dinner, and she seemed a bit nervous at times.

Veronica writes “I love you” in her mirror  with red lipstick before she goes to meet with Jameson and the boys. The boys are crazy and they destroy mailboxes before arriving at their destination. They’re impressed with the way Veronica can swing a bat.

When they all arrive at the woods and start calling out her name, taunting her.

They have furniture in the woods. Veronica gives them spiked drinks and they suspect nothing. 

Daniel asks her, “Would you like to play a game?”

She says,” Yes.”

It’s a game of Truth or Dare. If a dare card is pulled two times, you have to do it.

Jameson gets truth. Veronica asks him, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

He says his first time going hunting rabbits, and something tells me he’s lying. He says just because you kill something doesn’t mean you have to suffer.

Veronica gets the same question as Jameson, but she refuses to tell the whole truth so she drinks from her flask.

Nelson gets truth but refuses and chooses dare which is eat something, and he eats a worm.

Jameson asks her if she’s religious and she says no, the creepiest one of the boys after the leader is Daniel who says you can only ever experience pleasure through pain. 

She asks if there are any more girls coming and it seems like that’s not the case; they continue playing Truth or Dare.

Veronica gets a dare, she gets tied with a belt.

Jameson gets truth and she asks, “What happened to Gwen Thomas?”

He avoids the question since she’s tied up.

Jameson pulls a card for her that says, “Die.”

Veronica says, “I’d like to go home.” But is denied. And the leader of the boys says to her “Women don’t run fast after sexual assault. ” and gives her five minutes to run before they hunt her down and kill her. 

She starts running.

Let the Games Begin

The boys start to hunt Veronica down, and begin to hallucinate, as the chemical substance in the drinks takes hold.

She remembers what her trainer said to her, and goes after Daniel; the second craziest person there.

Daniel starts to hallucinate two people with panda heads coming towards him. He’s actually attacking Veronica and she kicks his ass. The panda head people have weird moving eyes and he freaks out, as Veronica kills him with his own axe. 

Up next is Nelson, who starts seeing a group of burglars around him before he hears his moms voice, he says he’s ready for this. Veronica disarms him quickly. She tries choking him once and fails. So she beats him for a bit until he falls to the ground and he begs for his life. Veronica kills him with a rock.

Jameson finds one of his dead friends and says to himself, “You are an interesting girl.”  He doesn’t care about his friends much either, only himself.

Shane’s girlfriend, Jennifer, arrives at the woods a and finds Jameson. So she asks him what’s going on and he says he’s hunting. He comes on to her, apparently they had a thing before she dated Shane. They start kissing, and Shane finds them together. 

Shane loves jenny, but Jameson tells him that people like him cannot love.  Then, Jameson tells Jenny the truth about everything.

Shane tells her to go.  Jameson points a gun at her and they fight. Shane knocks out Jameson. Jenny asks for forgiveness. Shane says he loves her, and then starts strangling her. He then realizes that she is actually Veronica. They fight for a bit and she strangles him,

Meanwhile Jameson continues to find his friends dead and finally runs into Veronica.

But, instead of attacking her, he gives her space to catch her breath.

They start asking each other questions.

She admits to spiking the alcohol with hallucinogen and then she asks Jameson how many girls he’s killed.

He says,” Twenty-one, including you. How did you feel when you killed my friends?”

“Fantastic.”

“I’m in love.”

Jameson is a true psychopath.

Veronica asks Jameson, “What’s your deepest darkest fear?”

Instead of answering he punches her. The fight starts. Veronica gets the upper hand after a while a chokes Jameson until he passes out and after this she gives him the alcohol with the hallucinogen in it so that when he wakes up he starts tripping.

She hangs him from a noose with his feet resting on a tree stump. He begs to be let down and says he’ll never hunt girls again. Veronica knows better than to believe him. He starts hallucinating, and all the girls he murdered come out of the woods. The spirit of Gwen walks up to him and he freaks out and his feet slip off the stump, and he hangs himself. 

William then pops out of the woodwork, carrying a rifle. He asks Veronica if she’s OK and she says “Never better.”

They go back to the diner to eat pancakes. Will asks Veronica, “How’s your pancakes?”

“Terrible”

“Mine too.”

Don’t know if I can call this a revenge story, or a group of sick demented people being hunted down by a person who was trained to do just this.

Moral of the story: Don’t eat pancakes after getting revenge. Because revenge may bring justice to the world, but it leaves a very bad taste in your mouth.