Hot Takes with Jo(seph)!

Hey, divas! It’s me, Jo(seph), one of your favorite co-hosts of your favorite podcasts!

I’m excited to be the first to tell you that I’m not only going to subject you to the torture of listening to my opinions; I also get to make you read them, too! How cool is that?!

If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I am chaotic as hell. So, it shouldn’t come as a shock to you when I tell you what my recurring blog series will cover: my hot takes in film and pop culture. I have a lot to say in this realm, obviously. Every so often, I am going to come on here and grace you with my thoughts. Let’s get right into it. Today’s hot take is…

The Best Character is Rarely the Survivor in Action or Horror Movies!

If you’ve spent any time on TikTok in the last five years, you may have scrolled upon some of the popular movie critic-styled influencers in your 'For You Page.'

No, you haven’t?

Just me?

Okay, then.

Well, let me explain then.

A lot of people are very passionate about films and their characters. There are some HEAVY opinions on the internet. Now, I’m one of those people.

A guilty pleasure of mine is sitting down and turning on some cheesy action or horror movie. There’s just something so exhilarating about watching a group of poorly connected friends running through the woods or a major city while trying to escape an alien or weapon-wielding psycho in a mask. I have no desire to ever live out these stories, so please, don’t make me one of those characters. Buzzfeed says I’m a final girl, but I think I’d be the second friend to die, truthfully. 

Before we get into the thick of it, consider this your warning about spoilers ahead.

So, before I break down some movies that I think made the wrong choices in survivors, I would like to acknowledge the one story that got it right: Cloverfield. J.J. Abrams’ found-footage alien hit will forever be a top ten movie of mine.

I find it almost comforting, even though it’s genuinely one of the scariest movies of the 2000s. Lily Ford, played by the beautiful Jessica Lucas, was easily the best pick for a final girl in the entire cast of the 2008 movie. Lily is incredibly smart, tactile, and spends almost all of her screen time running through New York City in tall golden heels. Surviving an alien invasion in stilettos and a little black party dress is ICONIC in nature. She’s one of my favorite characters in film history, and I’m eternally grateful she lived to see the escape.

Fun Fact: Jessica Lucas’s actual costume from the movie sold at an auction for $750 following the film’s release. Insane, if you ask me.

For our first flop, we have one of my top four movies featured on my Letterboxd account; 2009 brought us the much better recreation of Sorority Row.

This is one of the campiest, and funniest, scary movies I have ever seen and the cast was stellar. Briana Evigan, Jamie Chung, Leah Pipes, Audrina Patridge, and Carrie Fisher in one singular movie? No one could have ever predicted that.

I absolutely love that Briana Evigan’s Cassidy survived; however, I despised the writers’ decision on keeping Rumer Willis’s Ellie and Caroline D’Amore’s Maggie alive. Those two were USELESS AND PROBLEMATIC literally the entire time they were on the screen.

One of the greatest losses in cinematic history is Leah Pipes’s Jessica. Sure, Jessica was a purely evil bitch, but she was by far the smartest person in the friend group and had some of the best lines in the entire film. I hope and pray that they find a way to bring her back in the supposedly planned sequel, but I doubt it’ll be anything big. If it happens, I assume it would be like the Sarah Michelle Gellar cameo in the 2025 remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Gosh, now I want to rewatch this one.

Another remake from 2009 that they picked a rather dumb or dull character as the supposed final girl was Friday the 13th. I felt absolutely bamboozled by the time this one ended.

Another star-studded remake that made me question everything. It is so blaringly obvious that Jared Padalecki’s Clay and Danielle Panabaker’s Jenna have a thing for each other, but they are both significantly more intelligent than any of Jenna’s friends and actually make a couple of good movies. So, when Jason claims Jenna as his final victim, I was beyond devastated!

She worked so hard to get Clay and his sister reunited, and for what?! I didn’t find any redeeming qualities in Amanda Righetti’s Whitney, and I’m still pissed about how this one went down. 

My last example is a modern sleeper hit that also caused me a lot of heavy emotional breakdowns. Netflix took the world by storm in 2021 with the Fear Street trilogy. While I have opinions about all three, the first one - 1994 - is where I’d like to focus today.

First of all, Deena is a HORRIBLE main character, friend, and all-around person. She is so insanely selfish and suffers from a serious case of tunnel vision. Sam, her girlfriend, was dull and flat the entire movie. The story was carried heavily by Fred Hechinger’s Simon and Julia Rehwald’s Kate.

Kate is easily one of the greatest modern horror movie characters. I loved every choice she made, every line she said. She was the real star. Her death by grocery store bread slicer is also one of the most terrifying yet unique scenes in a horror movie. It is one of the few horror movie moments that actually made me audibly scream. I still have nightmares about it today.

I understand why the writers did what they did, but it pisses me off that they couldn’t keep one likeable character alive in this trilogy. Not a single one. Maybe in another life. 

So, there you have it. I have plenty of other hot takes in the scary movie department, but I only have so much space in a blog post to do that. Did I miss anyone you really wanted to see on this list? Or do you have the same feelings I do? Let me know! Bye, divas!