To be Named is to be Damned: Let’s Talk About Titular Women in Horror

By Kate Herndon

You make a very specific choice when you title a film. You give an audience an arbitrary word, or several, upon which to gauge their interest. You give them their first introduction to the content you have created. So, to give a movie a person’s name for a title is demanding; it’s characterizing and personifying. 

In the horror genre, names are not exceptionally common for titles: Nosferatu (1922), Eli (2019), maybe The Boy (2015), The Thing (1982), It (2017) and others that denote their relevant monster. These, however, name what you are to fear in abstraction. So, to be a titular woman in horror is to be singular. Worse, to be a titular woman in horror is to be damned, sacrificed, unbelieved, and used. But it is also to be inspiring, living, protecting, and existing beyond limits. As such, living in that paradox, we have a lot to talk about[1]. Let’s start with Carrie (1976), Mandy (2018), and Veronica (2017), three examples that dwell in the darkness of a complex and intimidating paradox, with unprecedented power and tragedy. 

Carrie

Carrie, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, features a complex titular character played by Sissy Spacek. Her name is first used when she is trapped in a crowd of schoolgirls. We wander through the girls outside and in the locker room to find Carrie in a shower scene just before she gets her period. In her moment of unknowingly death-centric panic, she appeals to the girls for help but they laugh and throw pads and tampons at her, leaving the gym coach to intervene, acting as surrogate mother.

After this episode, which also includes our first sprinkling of telekinetic light flickering, she is sent to the principal’s office. There, the stuffy man gets her name wrong over and over again: “Cassie Wright” for “Carrie White”. Three times, solidifying that very few people care. 

Throughout the film, Carrie’s name is used constantly. It is chanted, said with venom, spoken, and written. The little boy riding on his bike calls her “Creepy Carrie,” and Chris (Nancy Allen) says simply, “I hate Carrie White.” The name is scrawled on the gym wall and printed on the homecoming royalty ballots. Only occasionally is her name employed without an undercurrent of malice, but even that lack of malice comes with pity rather than appreciation. To adults, she is a pitiable enigma, but too uncomfortable a case for anyone to intervene. 

Carrie’s ascension to anti-hero status is timed with the descent of the bucket of pig’s blood. And in her shocking embarrassment and rage, she successfully kills everyone in the school, including nearly everyone who has shown her kindness. Her mother’s voice, “Trust me, Carrie. They’re all going to laugh at you,” rings through her head at this crucial moment and, in an exceptional scene of destruction (some might say, of pigs in a slaughterhouse), it seems that people have stopped saying her name for the first time. 

With Sue’s (Amy Irving) final nightmare, we see Carrie’s name upon a cross on the grounds of her scorched and sunken former home, “Here Lies Carrie White.” We understand that Carrie has not entirely left. Though she does not necessarily accrue traditional Final Girl status in a triumphant face off between good and evil, she has, effectively, vanquished her demons. In Sue’s dream, Carrie’s arm reaches out and grabs her wrist. She will not be rejected and ignored any longer. Carrie will not be forgotten. 

Mandy

In Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy, the titular character’s name is only uttered twice, first by a cult leader named Jeremiah Sands, and then by one of the other "Jesus freaks" who killed her.

The first spoken naming, "You're a special one, Mandy", takes place shortly before Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) is killed for rejecting Jeremiah's advances, for laughing in the face of his self-perceived greatness. The second instance of naming then occurs about an hour and forty minutes into the film as the second cult member in question, Father Swan, says, “She burned brightly, Mandy, don’t you think? Still, better to burn out than fade.” All this as her boyfriend, Red (Nick Cage), shoves a scythe-like battle axe down Father Swan's throat.

With these words, and this additional slaying, we are yet again made to believe that this film really begins only after the titular character is killed, and Red begins his rampage. Even the title card boasting Mandy's name does not grace the screen until an hour and fifteen minutes has passed. Though the film is an excellent articulation of cult dynamics and LSD-infused conflict and craze (and the psychedelic color scheme is exemplary), I think there is something especially pernicious in the use of Mandy as an inciting incident for slasher homage. 

Mandy’s “use” is ultimately in keeping with how the other two female characters are treated in the context of the film. A cult rolls into a small town, the leader spots Mandy out the window, and decides that he wants her. Before Mandy is even kidnapped by the motorcycle monster gang at the service of the cult (yes, this does occur), the cult leader, Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache), summons the youngest woman in the house, Sister Lucy (Line Pillet), to come to bed, and rages against the older female cult member, Mother Marlene (Olwen Fouéré). 

Marlene, feeling slighted by her role in the cult and Jeremiah’s harsh nature, takes an especially hateful role in the drugging of Mandy, feeling as though she is enacting power in a place of powerlessness. After Mandy disappoints Jeremiah in a scene in which he tries to show her his greatness and she laughs in his face (the crowning achievement of the film) the cult strings Mandy up in a sack of some kind, hanging her from her ankles. The words “the darker the whore, the brighter the flame” are said as both warning and promise. In slow motion, we see each cult member’s face as they watch and enjoy corporeal destruction. In Lucy’s eyes, we see sadness. This was long out of her control, but not out of the realm of possibility. There is an inevitability and eternity to her eyes. Something that says, for all the women in the film, we are frozen here. Mandy’s “chosen” status is exceptionally arbitrary, but her options are really only to be consumed, converted, fucked, or slain. 

In the action that does follow Mandy’s death, the full hour of it, Cage’s Red acts in service of revenge, to annihilate the people that took his love away from him. But thus far we know so little of Mandy, let alone the depth of their relationship. The first time we see her, for a moment actually alone and unwatched, she is drawing. Mandy is set up as the character of creation, meanwhile every other character in the film is either relishing in, or forced to watch, abject destruction. 

It is only Mandy to which I find myself regretfully unable to attribute any real sense of Final Girl status, and this is no fault of her own. I wish better for Mandy, her film should have done her better. Mandy is a rich character, a character of art and intrigue, and complex personhood, but she is sacrificed as a plot element for the sake of Nick Cage’s rock ‘n’ roll, psychedelic rampage. That is why her titular naming is so specific. The title card comes after her death and establishes two things, “tombstone” and “the action starts here”, neither of which resonate with the usual triumph given in the naming of a protagonist.  

Verónica

Perhaps the most eerie of these films, Verónica is based on a real-life police report from 1991 in Spain, though the name has been changed (and in due reverence I will not name the woman the story is based on here and will instead address the fictionalized story). 

Repetition and incantation factor heavily in this film. It is centered on traditional Ouija board activity as well as a teen girl responsible for her three young siblings while her mother works at a busy bar both days and nights. 

Tracking Verónica’s name is easy as both are used by many and in many different contexts. Her siblings use it when they need her help, her friends when they’re getting ready to use the Ouija board for the first time, her mother when she is chastising her for not being adult enough. In so many ways, Verónica’s name is used in that she is being called to and called for, the same way one calls a passed loved one (or a demon) through the use of a Ouija board. 

But the first time Verónica’s (Sandra Escacena) name is used, it is by her youngest sibling, Antoñito (Iván Chavero), who calls out to her, “Veró,” when one of his other sisters won’t open the door to the bathroom. The innocence of this moment will tragically parallel the final scene, in which Antoñito is sitting in the closet with his fingers plugged into his ears muttering over and over again, “Veró, Veró, Veró.” 

Her name is again called by Antoñito when, while stepping out for a moment when giving him a bath, the water is turned scalding. Her little brother’s cries echo through their apartment . That night, Verónica sees her father, naked, pallid, and waxen, coming towards her and repeatedly calling her name.

The film relies on people’s desire to not believe. Set against the backdrop of a solar eclipse, themes of looking away or askance abound, the lines of truth and safety are heavily blurred. Verónica is isolated and her name is spoken to denote her powerlessness; her friends discard her after the séance even though she goes yelling through a party and seeks them out for help, her siblings watch her pace the house in fear and hang hand drawn sigils above their beds, and her mother insists that she needs to grow up. Even her constant predilection for her headphones indicates isolation. She is not heard, but she certainly listens. 

In relation to other women, her friends, and her mother, she is painted as someone whose grip on reality is loosening. However, if anyone stopped to listen to her, they would be able to help her close the door on so much evil and to protect her siblings. Instead, in conversation with the blind Sister Death, one of the nuns at her school, she is knighted as sole protector. 

In the final scene, Veró has her brother draw sigils on the walls, and recruits her sisters to help her with a séance to finish what she started. They are unsuccessful, and so begins the chaos of trying to get all four of them out, unharmed. They are almost out, reaching the door of the apartment complex, when Veró realizes her brother is not with her, her arms wrapped around air. She goes back, and finds him in the closet, whispering her name. She tries to talk to him, but he won’t answer. In a heartbreaking moment, she remembers that she once told him to plug his ears and call out to her if the entity ever tried to speak to him.

To be named is to be damned, for Verónica most of all. She is named by her brother in this final moment, but is already possessed. In an exceptional act of agency, in a body already almost consumed by evil, Verónica boldly slits her throat. Yet again, we lose our protagonist. But, in her role as protector and guardian, she succeeds. She wins. Verónica’s body does not survive, but her sacrifice gives her the final say in what will harm her family and her friends. And that final say, is no one. 

Being the titular character in a horror film is much better than being Girl #2, or Hot Girl #1/first kill. This does not, however, mitigate the ways in which these films have left Carrie, Mandy, and Verónica painted as villains, deprived of agency, used for plot, or sacrificed. Whether or not inevitably killing off or sacrificing the main character was the goal is up for discussion, but it remains that these characters are not traditional Final Girls. Their “finality” belongs most to the way their names grace the covers of their films. 

So, I am left curious. How will the existence of titular women in the genre contribute to our evolving understanding of what it means to be a Final Girl? Or could there soon be a new distinction to name, laud, and honour the liminal place of titular women in horror?

[1] These three are not the only titular women in horror. I believe that we should include Luz (2018), Ma (2019), Emelie (2015), and Nadja (1994) in these named evaluations but, for the sake of space, I will be focusing on these three films. I would encourage and will be conducting my own further research into the politics and intricacies behind the abovementioned.

Kate Herndon is a first year Screenwriting Fellow at the American Film Institute. Perennially obsessed with words and nightmares, she can be found at @kt_1133 on Twitter

We've been going independently for years now, and so far have self-financed every single project. In order to do more work, and continue supporting amazing filmmakers in the genre space, we've launched a Patreon.

If you are able to support us and the work we do on Patreon, we'd truly and deeply appreciate it.