If the final girl is heroic, she is also a problematic figure, kept alive by the film-maker because of her sobriety or chastity while other women who have more fun get the axe.
Midway through Screen Violence, Chvrches’ intense fourth album, a song called Final Girl puts the well-worn horror trope to a more personal use.
As the song Final Girl quietly considers fame’s curious ins and outs, Mayberry wonders whether she should be “screaming”.
Although Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty now routinely slug it out with factory-made, female-vocalist-featuring EDM-pop franchises – especially since their mainstream-facing Love Is Dead LP of 2018 – their formative years in the underground have always supplied this trio with a sharp and occasionally dark edge.
A big, icy romp recorded by the three members in isolation until they could be reunited for the vocals and finishing touches, Screen Violence doubles down on film tropes, cosies up to horror auteur John Carpenter for remixes.
Of course, “screen violence” isn’t limited to 80s video nasties.
Inner horrors – self-doubt, regret, disillusionment – are all present and correct here too, as Mayberry reflects on her own past behaviour on the album’s bookends, Asking for a Friend and Better If You Don’t.
Chvrches have a song that absolutely nails that too: the massive, arena-seeking sledgehammer He Said She Said, a two-hander in which a “he” plays mind games with Mayberry’s “she”.
Here, the song Good Girls decries the double standards women are forced to live under – and the endless parade of male artists whose misdeeds keep on being exposed.