The Final Girl at the U.S.-Mexico Border: The Politics of Saving and Surviving in Undocumented (2010)

In the torture porn film Undocumented (Chris Peckover, 2010), protagonist Liz is a character descended from Carol J. Clover's Final Girl—she is forced to watch the torture and murder of her peers, while her wit and resilience help her survive. However, the body count surrounding Liz is not composed of sexually active white teenagers, but rather primarily of Mexican migrants. Using Undocumented as a case study, this piece argues for the continuing importance of Clover's analytical framework and of the Final Girl as a trope, but insists on taking her race, class, and nationality into account.