Summary
Teen girls are the unsung heroes of horror cinema. Long castas slasher baitand revenge-seeking victims, their bodies are all too often reduced to bloody spectacles, with little attention paid to their inner lives, making it easier to dismiss their roles as purely exploitative and one-dimensional.
Films likeGinger SnapsandRawbreak this tradition, reframingthe horror around distinctly feminine fears and experiences in a world where patriarchy is the true villain. These movies provide a refreshing take on the genre and an insight into the terrors of coming-of-age through the lens of femininity. The following are thebest women-led horror films that explore the messy reality of girlhood.
An essential entry into the ’90s teen movie canon,The Craftkick-started a trend of movies andTV series centered around teen witchcraft. Set in a Catholic school, it follows the arrival of a troubled new student who joins a coven of magical misfits and triggers their powerful awakening.
We are the weirdos, mister.
In this witchy cult classic, teenage insecurities and sisterly connections converge into a supernatural, gothic portrait of teenage girl rage and rebellion. While its dated elements, especially in the third act, undermine its feminist potential, the moments leading up to the finale perfectly encapsulate the otherness of growing up as a girl.
David Robert Mitchell’sIt Followsis anarthouse horror filmwith a remarkably unique premise: an inescapable curse passed on through sex. After a seemingly ordinary sexual encounter, college student Jay finds herself stalked by a shape-shifting entity that only she can see.
Beneath the pastel-colored, slow-burn horror is a story rooted in teenage fears regarding sex, loss of innocence, and the end of youth.With its synth-heavy score and sleepy suburban visuals,It Followscreates a disorienting, hard-to-place world that blends ’70s, ’80s, and modern aesthetics, suggesting the horrors of growing up are as inescapable as they are timeless.
An absurdist, adolescent spin on the classic horror novel,Lisa Frankensteinhas cult classic written all over it. Dubbed a ‘coming of rage,’ it depicts the self-discovery of a teen girl who spends too much time in a cemetery and, one night, resurrects a corpse, gradually shaping him into the perfect boyfriend.
Mary Shelley pennedFrankensteinas a teenager, so it’s fitting thatLisa Frankensteinreturns the iconic reanimation story to the control of a young woman. In this version, Lisa isn’t a scientist; she’s a lovesick seamstress, stitching together her undead dream boy with the tools tied to girlhood, from a sewing needle to a faulty tanning bed. Written by Diablo Cody, ofJennifer’s Bodyfame, the film channels teen angst, rage, and grief into an unapologetically girly and grotesque horror rom-com.
Directed by Osgood Perkins,Gretel & Hanselreimaginesthefamiliar Brothers Grimm fairy talewith Gretel’s coming-of-age story at the forefront. The film’s inverted title signals this shift, flipping the narrative on its head to one that centers on girlhood, autonomy, and awakening power.
He’ll soon come to fear you, as all men should if they’re smart. And fear so easily turns to hatred.
The film follows sixteen-year-old Gretel, who is thrust into the role of caretaker after she and her younger brother flee their parents in search of food and safety. Their descent into the woods marks Gretel’s first steps into womanhood and into her growing power, as they encounter a reclusive witch with whom Gretel forms a strange bond. Framed by dreamlike cinematography and laced with feminist dialogue,Gretel & Hanselis a slow-burning, horrifying tale about feminine agency and the patriarchal culture that fears and suppresses it.
Deserving of the second life thatJennifer’s Bodyeventuallyreceived,Teethis a criminally overlooked coming-of-age horror story. Plagued by its taboo premise, it was quickly dismissed as shock cinema rather than recognized for the sharp satire of purity culture it is.The film follows Dawn, a teenage abstinence advocate who, after a non-consensual sexual encounter, learns that she has vagina dentata, aka a ‘toothed vagina.’
Dawn must then learn to navigate life with her unique anatomy as she is repeatedly taken advantage of. Unfolding like an offbeat, darkly comedic revenge movie peppered with gorey castration scenes,Teethunpacks sexual trauma, male entitlement, and the repression of female sexuality.
Prioritizing emotional rather than objective realism, Julia Duocurnau’sRawdepicts a teenage girl’s coming-of-age through thelanguage of body horror.The French film tells the story of Justine, a lifelong vegetarian newly enrolled in a veterinary school attended by her older sister, who shares her newfound desire for human flesh.
The film draws clear parallels between Justine’s appetite and her sexual awakening, both of which emerge as an expression of her suppressed desires. The film is bursting withhard-to-watch, nauseating goreand packed with feminist subversion, as cannibalism comes to be a horrific stand-in for the nightmare of growing up in a world hostile to feminine autonomy.
The Witchfollows Thomasin, a teenage girl in seventeenth-century New England who is blamed for her family’s misfortunes after they are banished to the wilderness and are soon overcome by paranoia and dark forces, namely that of the titular witch.
With its foreboding and discordant score, Robert Eggers' feature-length debut transforms the anxieties of a teenage girl amid religious repression into a dread-filled folk horror nightmare. Thomasin’s family objectifies, mystifies, and demonizes her budding womanhood, equating it with an evil that she eventually embraces as a means of escape.The Witchexplores the perceived sin of feminine independence in a patriarchal world, where the horror is simply being a teenage girl.
Brian De Palma’sCarrieis the film that first established girlhood as a horror movie. It follows the titular Carrie White, a lonely teenager who experiences the nightmarish arrival of her first period in a high school locker room.
The traumatic moment triggers a slow-burning storm of pent-up telekinetic rage, fueled by years of bullying and the oppressive control of her fanatically religious mother. The pressure eventually builds to a fiery and bloody climax of paranormal payback at prom.Sissy Spacek’s haunting performanceas Carrie captures the fragile terror of girlhood and her now-iconic prom night bloodbath is burned into horror history.
Cult-favoriteJennifer’s Bodyfollows the close yet mismatched friendship between popular cheerleader Jennifer and nerdy Needy, which is further complicated when Jennifer becomes possessed by a demon and develops a taste for her male classmates.
Hell is a teenage girl.
Dripping with mid-2000s emo energy,Jennifer’s Bodyis a movie made by women for women. Bold in its exploration of competitive femininity, female friendship, lesbian desire, and the male gaze, it speaks directly to teenage girls. Though it was originally misunderstood and mismarketed, the film has since found its target audience, who now celebrate its endlessly quotable dialogue, subversive themes, and captivating performances. A decade later,Jennifer’s Bodyhas claimed its place as afeminist horror classic.
Few films capture the messiness and metamorphosis of girlhood quite likeGinger Snaps.This Canadian cult horror classic follows two socially outcast sisters, Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald, whose close relationship is tested when Ginger is bitten by a werewolf on the night she gets her first period.
Something’s wrong. Like more than you being just… female.
Ginger’s lycanthropic transformation is playfully figured as the horror of coming into adolescence, a dark allegory for how women’s sexuality is often treated as abnormal, threatening, or even monstrous. Though satirical,Ginger Snapsprovides an emotionally raw portrait of girlhood married with gore, exploring sexuality, puberty, and sisterhood with thoughtful feminist consideration and leaving room for possible queer and trans readings. As an early-2000s update to the ‘menstrual horror’ canon established byCarrie,Ginger Snapscreated the blueprint for a lot of the films on this list.
