Good For Her Horror

Is there anything better than revenge (fictional revenge that is)? It’s often empowering to watch a victim get back at their abuser. There’s been a particular spike in a certain type of revenge film over the past decade: “Good for her.” 

The subgenre was named after Lucile Bluth’s iconic line in Arrested Development when she responds to a news story about a mother rolling her child-filled car into a lake with a resounding, “good for her!” Good for her movies have been praised for their feminist portrayals of women overpowering their opressors. They often consist of a woman going through intense trauma and getting violent revenge. The subgenre is especially popular in horror, with films like Midsommar, Ready or Not, and The Witch falling into the category. 

There has been much debate as to whether these films are actually feminist pieces, though. Almost all of the films in this subgenre are written and directed by men, with a majority of them featuring cis, straight, white leads. The lack of intersectionality in the good for her genre makes it feel a bit antiquated. How are we really addressing feminist issues if we’re only speaking about one form of female opression? 

Another issue with the good for her film is that the protagonist must do questionable things and become as bad- if not worse- as the antagonist. The women leading these movies often commit brutal murders and join questionable communities. In a film like Midsommar, for example, the main character Dani is able to (slight spoiler alert) get away from her emotionally abusive boyfriend by joining a white supremacist cult. Is this really a “you go girl” moment? Is this really good for her? The film was very well received, with many championing it as a feminist film. I wonder, though, would audiences have responded differently if Dani were a Black woman killing her white boyfriend? Yes, she was able to escape her boyfriend, but only by entering into an equally (if not more) abusive situation. Dani is still the victim here, she just doesn’t realize it. 

One of the biggest problems I have with good for her movies is that they are almost exclusively made by men. This isn’t to say that men can’t make feminist films, they certainly can, but is this really the way to go about it? Many of these stories seem to suggest that women must go through immense trauma and destroy their lives entirely in order to be free from oppression. It equates feminism with violence. It’s hard to say whether these films even really intend to be feminist pieces. Did the writer really want this to be empowering, or are we just so starved for feminist content that we project feminism onto them?  

I say all this, and yet I adore good for her horror. I can’t help but applaud the protagonist as she slowly descends into madness. I admit, it’s empowering to watch women get vengeance. We so rarely get to see women stand up for themselves that whenever they do, it feels like feminism. I hope in the future we start to see a shift in the genre to films written and directed by women, especially women of color and queer women. A more accurate and intersectional representation of female rage is exactly what the good for her genre needs.