The "Final Girl" Trope in Álex de la Iglesia’s El bar (2017)

In Álex de la Iglesia’s black comedy horror film El bar (2017), a group of strangers from varying social statuses are trapped inside of the bar after witnessing the assassination of two passers-by outside. As time goes on, and fear and confusion mount, the characters begin to turn on each other one by one. De la Iglesia utilizes a common trope in horror movies: the “final girl.” Often portrayed as a damsel in distress, this character defies her ostensibly innocent personality by winning in a climactic confrontation with the killer and living to tell the story. De la Iglesia subjects El bar’s final girl to sexual abuse and draws stark contrasts between the male and female characters. This paper argues that de la Iglesia develops the trope of the “final girl” as a means to criticize how the feminine body is exploited through the terror genre.