[Editorial] Top 15 Good for Her Horror Movies

TW: Sexual assault, domestic abuse, suicide

Historically, the horror genre is not super kind to women. Even with the creation of the final girl, designed to kick the baddie’s butt, women in horror typically go through a lot of pain and suffering even if they manage to survive to the closing credits. 

However, sometimes women in horror go through an unspeakable amount of trauma and don’t merely survive. Instead, they make sure their attackers are punished just as much in retribution. And so, ‘good for her’ horror is born! Rather than simply taking the killer down in the final moments, these ‘good for her’ movies see our survivors channel everything they’ve been through and reflect it back at the villains so we can enjoy their suffering. 

So without further ado, here are 15 of the best examples of ‘good for her’ horror - the perfect watches for when you want to revel in someone else’s revenge! Proceed with caution, as there are major spoilers ahead!

15) Till Death (2021)

Till Death sees Mark plan his own death in an elaborate fashion that is designed to punish his unfaithful wife, Emma, as much as possible. After waking up at their secluded lake house, Mark handcuffs himself to Emma and then shoots himself. Emma soon finds the car disabled, all mobile phones missing, and the kitchen stripped of anything she could use to break the handcuffs or chop off her hand. 

Mark also hires Emma’s past stalker, Bobby, to arrive at the house to kill her and retrieve some diamonds. Emma decides she’s not going to let Mark or Bobby ruin her life and fights with everything she’s got to escape her shackles and take down her attackers, leaving her the last person standing at the end of the film.

14) Knucklebones (2016)

After student Nessa tries to take her own life when her fiance breaks up with her, she is taken out for a night of partying to try and forget about her heartbreak. However, she and her friends end up at a poor choice of party venue when they head to an abandoned factory which is also the home of a cursed dice game.

Playing knucklebones raises the vengeful spirit tied to the game, which the players can only get rid of if they roll a very specific dice combo. However, when Knucklebones himself destroys the dice (which just so happen to be made of human finger bones), it seems like all is lost. After everything she’s been through, Nessa refuses to die in this way and ends up cutting her hand off so she can create her own set of bone dice, and send Knucklebones back into the game.

13 ) Frankenhooker (1990)

Elizabeth really has the worst luck in the world when she’s accidentally beheaded by her inventor fiancee, Jeffrey, at her father’s birthday party. Determined not to be without her, Jeffrey decides to dismember a bunch of sex workers and sew them together into a Frankenstein’s monster style creature with Elizabeth’s head. This means that Jeffrey has to murder a lot of women in the process of bringing Elizabeth back to life.

When the sex workers’ pimp shows up to try and claim Elizabeth as his own, all the dismembered but reanimated parts of the women attack him, dragging him into the fridge they were stored in, finally getting their revenge for the way he treated them. And Elizabeth helps to get a little revenge on Jeffrey too by bringing him back as a sewn together creature just like her, so they can be together forever.

12) Gerald’s Game (2017)

In a plot that is very similar to Till Death, Jessie ends up handcuffed to the bed of her remote lake house after her husband, Gerald, dies of a heart attack as they’re about to have sex. Jessie has to deal with the ghost of Gerald, a hungry dog, the Moonlight Man, and different versions of herself as she tries to figure out how to free herself and survive.

During her time handcuffed to the bed, Jessie has to deal with the demons of her past, and eventually gain the courage she needs in order to escape. Eventually, she figures out she has to deglove her own hand in order to make it off the bed before the Moonlight Man or the dog comes back for her. It’s a beautifully gory scene and shows just how far Jessie is willing to go to overcome Gerald’s horrible influence on her.

11) Swallow (2019)

Perhaps best avoided if you’re pregnant, Swallow follows Hunter, a new bride who has married into a rich and snobby family. When Hunter finds out she’s pregnant, Ritchie and his family start to take over her life and control her pregnancy. As a result of the pressure she finds herself under, Hunter ends up compulsively eating strange objects, such as marbles, drawing pins, and batteries. 

Ritchie soon finds out about Hunter’s habit, and his family’s control over her grows to an unbearable level. After discovering that they plan to commit her until the baby is born, Hunter runs away for her in-laws and gets an abortion so she can finally sever the hold Ritchie’s family has over her.

10) Colossal (2016)

When Gloria returns to her childhood home after a bad breakup, she quickly reconnects with her school friend, Oscar. Determined to get her life back on track and ditch her reliance on alcohol, Gloria accepts an offer to work at Oscar’s bar and takes up residence in her parent’s old house. 

However, Gloria soon discovers that when she visits a very specific part of town at a certain time of day, she manifests a giant monster in Seoul, which has the potential to destroy the city. When Oscar develops a monster of his own, Gloria also realises that he has been emotionally abusing her since they were children. Eventually, Gloria heads to Seoul so that her monster will appear beside the human Oscar, allowing her to finally get rid of him forever.

9) You’re Next (2011)

Meeting your new boyfriend’s family is never a fun time, and poor Erin is thrown right in the deep end when her boyfriend, Crispin, takes her to his family’s remote house for his parent’s anniversary celebrations. As if the whole situation wasn’t bad enough, a group of animal-masked killers turn up and start taking out the family members one by one.

However, Erin proves a worthy foe after growing up in a survivalist compound, which comes in handy when she discovers that Crispin is behind the whole scheme. Even though he tries to convince her that she was never an intended victim, and he planned to share his newfound riches, she promptly kills her for putting her in such a terrifying situation in the first place.

8) Death Proof (2007)

Death Proof’s villain is Stuntman Mike, an ex-stuntman who likes terrorising and ultimately murdering groups of young women using his highly modified Hollywood stunt car. The first half of the movie sees him get close to Arlene and her friends before he kills them all in a car accident.

He later comes across Zoe, Abernathy, and Kim test driving a 1970 Dodge Challenger while Zoe is riding on the car’s bonnet. After Zoe is thrown from the car but is miraculously uninjured, the women decide to hunt down Mike and get their revenge. After running his car off the road, the women successfully beat Mike to death, with Abernathy delivering the killer final blow with her boot.

7) The Invisible Man (2020)

In Leigh Whannell’s modern retelling of The Invisible Man, Cecilia finds herself terrorised by her ex-boyfriend, Adrian, after she finally breaks free of their relationship. While the rest of the world thinks Adrian is dead, Cecilia knows he is still stalking her. Eventually, she finds out he has engineered an invisibility suit so he can stalk her 24/7 and isolate her from everyone around her.

Near the end of the movie, Cecilia heads to Adrian’s house while wearing a wire, to finally try and secure a conviction for the crimes he has committed against her. During dinner, she uses a second invisibility suit to murder Adrian, and make it look like he slit his own throat because she knows it’s the only way she will finally be rid of him.

6) Ready or Not (2019)

Despite knowing that the wedding night initiation into his family may involve a deadly game of hide and seek, Alex still agrees to marry his girlfriend, Grace. Unfortunately for Grace, she draws hide and seek as the game of choice, meaning either she has to die or Alex’s whole family will. 

To begin with, Grace doesn’t really believe she’s in danger, but she soon realises Alex’s family are determined to kill her to ensure their family stays successful and alive. After a night of violence, Grace is at the point of being killed as part of the family’s ritual when they find out they’ve run out of time. She then gets to watch on as every member of the family, including her treacherous fiancee, explodes in a fountain of blood.

5) Teeth (2007)

Teeth tells the story of Dawn, a young woman with teeth in her vagina who has an unpleasant encounter with pretty much every man she comes across. Dawn has decided to stay a virgin until she gets married, but when her friend, Tobey, rapes her, she discovers her second set of teeth when she bites his penis off.

Dawn also has to deal with her terrible step-brother, Brad, who would rather have sex with his girlfriend than help Dawn’s mother as she lies dying. After hearing of her mother’s death, Dawn decides she’s had enough of Brad’s behaviour and being walked over by everyone in her life. She finally agrees to have sex with Brad, something he has been asking for for years, and then bites his penis off before feeding it to his dog.

4) The Woman (2011)

When Chris Cleek discovers a feral woman living in the woods, he decides to kidnap her, lock her in his basement, and force his entire family to look after her and try to civilise her. However, Chris’ motives are far darker, and he abuses the woman, and his family, any chance he gets. 

As well as beating his wife, and raising his son to be the worst person in the world, Chris has also gotten his oldest daughter, Peggy, pregnant. When Peggy’s teacher comes to the house to talk to her parents, Chris physically assaults her, and Peggy decides to free the Woman in order to save her. The Woman kills Peggy’s mother, brother, and father before leaving the farm with Darlin’, Peggy’s little sister, and Peggy in tow to start a new life.

3) Evil Dead (2013)

In order to try and beat her drug addiction, Mia heads to her old family cabin in the woods to try a cold turkey approach with her friends and her brother. However, things go wrong when it turns out there is an evil force in the woods. And when her friends don’t believe her account of the things she’s seen in the forest, Mia finds herself possessed by the dark force.

In the end, her brother David figures out how to bring her back from Hell, right before he dies, causing the Abomination to rise. Despite trying to overcome drug addiction and only being back from Hell for about five minutes, Mia takes the Abomination head-on and wins! Not only does she rip her own hand off to survive, she also shoves a chainsaw down the Abominations throat as it rains blood!

2) Midsommar (2019)

Riddled with grief and dating possibly the worst person ever, Dani heads to Sweden with her boyfriend, Christian, and his friends to spend midsummer in a Swedish commune. While she’s there, Dani is forced to face her grief head-on, causing her to pull away from Christian as she starts to connect to the women in the commune a little more. 

In the climax of the festivities, Dani is named the May Queen, and she catches Christian having sex with another woman as part of a fertility ritual. When she’s given the choice of placing Christian or a random villager in a bear suit and then burning them to death as part of a ritual sacrifice, Dani decides to rid her life of her ex once and for all. 

1) Revenge (2017)

What starts as a weekend away with her married lover, Richard, ends with Jen being raped by his friend and then pushed off a cliff when Richard decides to side with his friends over her. After pulling herself free from the tree she is impaled on, Jen runs on foot into the desert, as Richard and his friends pursue her, confident that they will find and kill her in no time. 

However, they clearly don’t anticipate Jen’s will to survive or get revenge, and she starts to murder the men one at a time. Eventually, it’s just her and Richard left, as she pursues him around his luxury desert house. Richard is so sure he can beat her with ease, but Jen is determined not to give up, eventually shooting and killing her ex-lover and leaving him in a huge pool of blood.

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