Character – Female lead

Katniss (played by Jennifer Lawerence) from ‘Hunger Games’

Katniss would be a good influence as she is crafty and has skills to help her survive. However, she is probably a little bit too skilled as we don’t want our female lead to surivive easily. We want her to have some struggle to create a more gripping film. We can still take inspiration from Katniss in who we cast. Katsniss doesn’t have a super feminine face and isn't the typical pretty, air-headed girl we see in a lot of horror films. In the trailer she shows bravery when she says ‘I volunteer as tribute’ to do something horrible, so that her sister doesn’t have to. This shows that she is a brave, strong character. We will take inspiration from this.

Danielle (played by Elisha Cuthbert) from ‘The girl next door

In this film this actor plays the typical ‘girl next door’ character. This type of characters are often very ‘wholesome’ and quite feminine. They the are well liked and down too earth. Often are attractive but don’t seem aware of it. We will take aspects of this character, as we want our female lead to be well liked. This means the audience will care about her more as a character and be more invested in the film. However we want our lead to be more dynamic and skilled than the ‘girl next door character’ so it is more realistic that she survives.

Jill Johnson (played by Camilla Belle) from ‘When a Stranger Calls’

This character is a good source of inspiration as she is very scared but still puts up a struggle and survives and manages to save the children she is babysitting in the film. She is the right mix between strong and weak. She isn’t sexualised and made out to be a air-head, which often happens in horror films and is not what we want. However she is quite young and has a very soft and high voice. This makes her seem more vulnerable and we would like a female lead who seems more tough and able to take care of her self then this character. Also in the trailer for ‘When a Stranger Calls’, most of what she says is just ‘Hello’ and ‘Who is this?’, which doesn’t show much depth to her character as this are very generic and unhelpful things to say in this context. Although at one point in the trailer she does show edge when she has enough and shouts ‘stop calling me, you sicko’ down the phone.

Julie (played by Teresa Palmer) from ‘Warm Bodies’

We will take a lot of inspiration from the casting of this character. She appears both feminine tough. She wears little make up and has a fairly strong face, not just soft features. In the trailer for the film we can see that as a character she, is brave and strong as when we first meet her in the trailer she is handling a gun, killing zombies. However she also falls in love with the main zombie in the film and shows a lot of care. Will will take inspiration of this character to make our main lead girl both capable and caring. This will make her more liked by the audience so they care and engage with her and the film more.

Montage of different female leads who are the victims in horror films