Welcome back for the final part of our Women in Horror Month feature on resilient female characters! As I mentioned in the previous two installments, I was thrilled to speak with a group of amazing authors as we celebrate Women in Horror Month all throughout the month of March.
So I’ll allow them to tell you all about the characters they love in the genre!
EDEN ROYCE: Jeryline in Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, played by Jada Pinkett-Smith (Jada Pinkett at the time). She’s my favorite resilient character because she survives, which was a rare thing for Black women horror actors at the time. It was honestly so refreshing to even see her as the heroine. Jeryline destroyed a manipulative, homicidal demon who was in search of an ancient key relic that would give it the power of the cosmos, and afterward, she took on the duty of being the key’s caretaker, all while saving her cat.
WENDY DALRYMPLE: Sometimes in horror with femme-focused or final girl type stories there is often an emphasis on a “strong” FMC. For me resilience isn’t always found in strong people, sometimes it develops in a soft character who must learn to be hard. For example, Noa, the FMC in the film FRESH, is your average girl-next-door just looking for love. She’s not hard or strong, but she is resilient and finds her strength, not just for herself, but for her friends too in order to escape and survive.
K.J. BRANTLEY: Eva Galli in Ghost Story by Peter Straub feels resilient to me because, whether villain or victim, she cannot be erased. Across time and identity, she returns again and again, evolving into a force far more powerful than those who tried to control her.
JULIE LEW: It is so hard to choose a favorite, but Megan Bontrager’s Eye of the Ouroboros comes to mind. Park ranger Theodora Buchanan is haunted by her sister’s disappearance in the very woods she now works in. In her relentless search for her sister, Theo’s understanding of reality is subverted and she must battle against the Federal Bureau of Reality, a hostile organization who has taken a sudden interest in her. With so much grit and heart, it’s impossible not to fall for Theo and root for her from the first page to the very last.
MEG RIPLEY: Goody in Laird Hunt’s IN THE HOUSE IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS is someone who I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I read her. Goody’s journey from victim—abused girl to abused wife—has her staggering away from puritanical society into the woods only to meet more seemingly sinister entities, but what HAPPENS in the woods, the processing of grief and trauma, it’s equal parts terrifying and utterly devastating.
CLAIRE L. SMITH: Margot/Erin from The Menu (2022)! The Menu was easily one of my favourite films of 2022 and Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance as Margo really made the film. I love that in a room full of rich, privileged people, she’s the only one who has the grit and determination to survive. I also really appreciated how she’s never portrayed as needing the approval of any of the male characters to survive. She doesn’t need to prove to Tyler that she’s as ‘cultured’ as him and she doesn’t need to prove to Slowik that she fits his version of ‘one of us’. She maintains a complete sense of self and will not hesitate to stand up for herself, both of which are hard to do when your life is on the line.
ABBY VAIL: My favorite resilient woman in horror is Rosemary from Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. To be a woman who endures a painful pregnancy, who’s gaslit by most men in her life, manipulated by a cult, and forced to give birth to the spawn of Satan only to look up from the bassinet and demand, “His name is Andrew,” is the definition of resilience. When Rosemary gazes into the face of evil, she believes the half which came from her is so inherently good it deserves nurture. She tickles the belly of darkness and light commands the room in the form of an indestructible mother.
DENISE TAPSCOTT: My favorite resilient female character in horror is Abbie Mills from the tv show Sleepy Hollow. I love that she was a fiesty detective who boldly fought both natural and supernatural characters. She was always direct and yet graceful when dealing with anything that came across her path, whether it was something family-related, or battling demonic entities with Ichabod Crane.
FRANCES PAI: When I think of resilient women and female characters, I think of the defining events that make us strong when it matters because acts of survival and courage are often premised on earlier experiences where we were forced to feel powerless and silenced. Train to Busan features the creation of this exact female resilience through the lens of a small girl, Su-An. A child of recently divorced parents and a workaholic father, she has stage fright where she cannot sing “Aloha ‘Oe” at a recital her father has missed. For much of the movie, Su-An is like this. No real agency, serving to implement her father’s redemption arc as he keeps her alive from zombie hordes. She’s a final girl who can’t save herself. But, at the end, when she has lost everything, including her father, it is the simple act of singing that distinguishes her from the zombies and ultimately ensures her survival. Her resilience is a quiet steel. It’s a refusal to let horror and trauma destroy who we are at our core – our minds, our spirits, our capacity to love, and our ability to honor those who sacrificed themselves for our survival.
ASHLEY HUYGE: Immanuelle from Alexis Henderson’s The Year of the Witching is one of my favorite characters! She resists the patriarchal rule of her village’s religious leader, while seeking protection from a curse for the people she loves. Even after her family turns her away, she finds the dedication to keep fighting. She adapts, she grows, and she conquers! She reminds us that we need to be strong, especially in hard times.
SUMIKO SAULSON: My favorite resilient female character in horror is Damali Richards, star of LA Bank’s The Vampire Huntress Legend series, a hip-hop spoken word artist who was slaying demons way before K-Pop Demon Hunters was a gleam in its daddy’s eye. Orphaned at a young age, when she’s 20, she finds out she’s a Neteru, with a divine purpose to become a vampire huntress, but she’s already a major musical powerhouse and a star. I love her for the African American representation, and she’s definitely resilient and a total badass.
CARLIE ST. GEORGE: Selena from 28 Days Later is one of my favorite resilient female characters in horror. She loses everyone. The world as she knows it completely collapses—but Selena adapts out of necessity to survive, closing herself off and killing quickly when needed, but also rescuing our male protagonist (multiple times, even) and eventually adapting again, relearning what it means to actually live and not to just “fucking cope.”
C.R. LANGILLE: My favorite resilient female character in horror is Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise. I love how she’s a problem solver in the moment, even when things feel dire, and how she’s willing to fight for the survival of not just herself, but others as well.
NADIA BULKIN: My pick is Sophia from A Dark Song, who hires an occultist to help her conduct a grueling rite following the death of her son. I could justify this choice with the months of physical and psychological torture Sophia endures in order to win an audience with her guardian angel – but anyone who’s lost a loved one knows this is nothing compared to the nonsensical resilience required by grief. Sometimes you defy death because you genuinely want to live; sometimes, like Sophia, you say “not today” purely out of spite.
REI ALYSSA MURRAY: My favorite resilient female character in horror is Rose Da Silva from Christophe Gans’ 2006 film, Silent Hill. She is dropped into a terrifying otherworld in pursuit of her missing adopted daughter while initially being pursued by a police officer, whose history with the town leads her to believe Rose has horrific intentions for Sharon. Rose is tormented by monsters and the town’s manipulative religious cult but still accomplishes her mission with a new understanding of motherhood.
KELLY BROCKLEHURST: I love Lorraine Warren from The Conjuring franchise. She’s a total badass when faced with terrifying situations, but it’s her love for her family that really gets me. She is just as iconic as some of the classic women in horror, like Laurie Strode.
KC GRIFANT: I know this is a common favorite, but Ellen Ripley tops the list. I rewatch the Alien trilogy regularly and her no-nonsense, take-charge attitude in the face of unspeakable horrors and trauma is forever inspiring. Talk about resilience: she faces her worst fear multiple times and never lets it compromise her humanity and compassion. And the scene at the end of Aliens with the exoskeleton? Beyond iconic.
KATHRYN TENNISON: Maggie Greene Rhee (from The Walking Dead comics) evolves from a lost, suicidal young woman into a steadfast leader and a key player in the fight to build a new world. Despite losing almost everyone she loves, Maggie is strong and determined, constantly working toward a better future. In the end, she learns to rely on herself, and that’s enough.
HANA JABR: Horror and resilience gets me thinking about Margaret from The September House by Carissa Orlando. I loved the way Orlando represented denial as a key feature of trauma and domestic violence through Margaret’s acceptance of the horrors haunting her house. I also love Winifred Notty in Victorian Psycho and her stark rejection of oppressive societal/gender norms.
LEE MURRAY: Not necessarily my favourite, but a heroine who springs to mind from my recent reading is FBI Behavioural Science trainee Clarice Starling from Thomas Harris’s classic horror novel The Silence of the Lambs. What I love about Clarice, at least in this book, is that she represents. After the techs have been and gone, Clarice returns to crime scenes and examines them the way only a woman can. She offers a woman’s corpse the dignity only a woman can. She endures blatant misogyny and harassment that only a woman understands. She’s prepared to relive her own trauma if it will get the job done and stop a serial killer from killing again.
“The victims are all women and there aren’t any women working this. I can walk in a woman’s room and know three times as much about her as a man would know, and you know that’s a fact. Send me.”—Clarice Starling, p. 342.
Clarice Starling is manipulated, maligned, and sidelined by almost all the male characters in the story and a good number of the women. Yet when the inevitable barriers go up, and doors close, when her own future is at risk, Clarice acts anyway. Not yet a fully-fledged member of the agency, she claims her own agency, even while stepping carefully inside the lines. She is the final girl who not only saves herself, but all the other victims who might have been. In Silence of the Lambs, Lector, the philosophising, rhapsodising killer cannibal, gets the big billing, but he’s merely a caricature, while there is something undefinably real about Clarice.
ANDREA BLYTHE: I love the resilience of Jade Daniels from Stephen Graham Jones’ Indian Lake Trilogy (starting with My Heart Is a Chainsaw). To survive the horrors of living in an abusive home, she turns to the horrors films as a kind of comfort, using those lessons as a guide to survive the terrors she believes will come – and they do come. She survives a slew of nightmares across books and learns how to not just survive, but build a life and find family and community for herself.
And that’s part three of our Women in Horror Month spotlight on female characters. Please check out part one and part two of our resilient characters spotlight as well!
Happy reading, and happy Women in Horror Month!