The Final

"Ask yourself one question: 'What did I do to get here?'"

"Consequences. None of us are free from them."

—Dane

"This lesson, you will not learn in school."

—Emily

Loosely based on actual events, The Final is a 2010 horror film about a group of high school outcasts who lure their tormentors to a party, drug them, and exact their vengeance upon them.

After being continuously bullied throughout High School, and having all attempts at peace-making being met with laughs, Dane and his friends (Emily, Jack, Ravi and Andy) concoct a plan to not only get revenge, but to also send a message to the entire country. After learning in class about deadly chemicals and the torture methods of cultures past, and gaining inspiration from their vast collection of horror films, the desperate teens set up the Workley ranch house with webcams and create a party, inviting all of their bullies to attend. The five then pray to God to give them a sign to stop them, and when none comes, they carry out their plan.

At the party, the five outcasts dress up in funny costumes that mask their identity, and serve spiked punch to their victims, knocking them unconscious. The five then change costume, creating a darker visage to wear as their personas. The guests awaken in chains, and Dane tells them that, for the years they spent abusing students that they saw as weak and helpless, they would pay for their sins: the bullies would not die, but by the end of the night, they will wish that they had.

The film was part of the After Dark Horrorfest film festival.

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Tropes used in The Final include:

• Aborted Arc: When the outcasts are setting up their torture chamber, they mention how they are rigging the place with webcams in order to send a message to high school students all across the country. This is never brought up again.
• Alpha Bitch/Girl Posse: Kelly, Bridget and Heather.
• And I Must Scream: One of the bullies is drugged so that he cannot move but can feel everything. Then, Emily sticks him in the throat with needle after needle, despite the desperate cries of his friends to stop. All the while, she remains completely silent.
• Asshole Victim: The bullies.
• Badass Adorable: Emily.
• The Bad Guy Wins
• Beauty to Beast: Bridget and Heather get messed up by Emily's chemicals.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Before years of abuse warped them, the five were (and still are, to some extent) really nice kids. And Emily genuinely just wanted to be friends with the popular girls.

Emily: "I wanted to be your friend. But now I'm going to be your enemy."

• Black and Grey Morality: There are no good guys. Only varying levels of badness.
• Black Dude Dies First: Averted. Kurtis not only survives the entire movie, but also saves the day by calling the cops.
  • Played straight, however, with Ravi, the Token Minority among the outcasts. He is the first one of them to die, having been killed by Dane for freeing Kurtis.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Kelly, Heather and Bridget.
• Blond Guys Are Evil: Bradley is indeed evil. And kinda pathetic too.
• Break the Haughty: The goal of the outcasts. The vain Alpha Bitch and her Girl Posse have flesh-eating chemicals slathered onto their faces to destroy their good looks and make them as ugly on the outside as they are inside, while a womanizing Jerk Jock is left paralyzed so that he will never play football or have sex again.
• Bully Hunter: The five outcasts. At first.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The outcasts' stock in trade.
• Crazy Survivalist: The ex-army guy.
• Cruel Mercy: The outcasts left their victims alive... but with many wishing that they weren't.
• Dark and Troubled Past: The five have trouble both at home and at school.
• Death by Irony: The Vietnam veteran winds up getting taken out by a punji stake trap -- exactly the kind once used by the Vietcong. However, it's only implied that he died.
  • While not "death," most of the tortures inflicted by the outcasts have some relevance to their victims. See Break the Haughty for examples.
• Death by Racism: Again, not actually "death," but the bulk of the jocks' interaction with the Indian kid Ravi consists of extremely racist remarks.
• Dirty Cop: The police officer lets the jocks go in exchange for them handing over all their weed... which he is later seen smoking. A deleted scene reveals that he does the same thing for any good-looking women he pulls over, in exchange for sex.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Cold-Blooded Torture and mutilation as a punishment for bullying.
• Driven to Suicide/Redemption Equals Death: Kelly. See Survivor Guilt.
• Dysfunctional Family: Almost all of the outcasts come from families that are broken one way or the other.
• Downer Ending: All of the outcasts die, but not before mutilating several victims, leaving the whole town in mourning. And to make it worse It is revealed that everyone in the town more or less missed the point of the whole thing, painting the entire affair as being completely unprovoked and portraying the victims as saint-like.
  • But the kids who survived, maimed or otherwise, know why it happened. People talk - especially in high school. It might not have had a national effect or became the "moment in history" Dane believed it would be, but if the victims change their behavior and their children's behavior, that's a significant amount right there, not taking into account the Urban Legend effect and the open secret environment of many small to medium size towns - when everyone knows why something really happened despite what outsiders and the media may report. Perfect example - Remember how the movie starts and ends- with the mother telling her curious son about the disfigured girl's "accident"
    • Fridge Brilliance: The parents of bullies never know that their little angels are putting other kids through hell. The teachers frequently only catch the reaction, not what the bully did first.
• Dramatic Unmask: Upon realizing that their hostages have a pretty good idea of who they are, the five take their masks off and introduce themselves.
• Dressing as the Enemy: The five dress in costumes in order to walk about the party unnoticed, until the time is right.
• Emotionless Girl: Emily. Until Ravi is killed, that is. Then she goes right back to this.
• Evil Versus Evil: The five versus the bullies.
• Faceless Goons: There are actually eight outcasts, but only five are of any importance to the plot, are named and actually shown planning their revenge. The other three only exist in order to be killed off by a crazy Vietnam vet. They were initially seen on the school steps, and their presence was meant to prevent the victims from leaving and to confuse police officers when the plan was over, but time constraints forced this subplot to be mostly removed bar a few lines of dialogue.
• Fate Worse Than Death: The five mutilate and torture their tormentors, disfiguring them and causing them unspeakable harm.
• Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Emily.
• Fingore: Emily offers Bridget one chance to avoid pain: cut off all of Bradley's fingers in exchange for her own safety. When she refuses, Emily offers the same deal to Bradley, who accepts.
• For the Evulz: Bradley bullied Dane simply because he knew that Dane could not stop him.
• Forced to Watch: All but one of the five's victims was brutally tortured in front of their friends.
• Foreshadowing: A little example, but in the scene where Bernard throws milk at the outcasts' table, Bridget has quite a different expression on her face than the others, looking unimpressed at the stunt while the others are laughing.
• Genre Deconstruction: Of the "unpopular kids get revenge on the bullies" plot, and the "psycho classmate" plot. Instead of the comical revenge that so many teen movie protagonists desire, the outcasts wish to make their bullies suffer the way that they made the outcasts suffer for so many years. It's also implied that the outcasts were (and, to a degree, still are) genuinely nice people whose crappy home lives, combined with years of bullying, turned them into such dark characters, as seen with the way they treat Kurtis. In addition, the popular kids (especially Bridget) are shown to have shades of gray, rather than portraying them as the total jerkasses so commonly seen in teen movies.
• Give Me a Sign: The five pray to God to give them a sign that they should stop. He doesn't.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Surprisingly for a film of this nature, there is little to no blood, with most of the violence being off-screen and suggested. However, it works.
• The Grotesque: Bridget and Heather get turned into this by Emily.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The five become worse than their tormentors on their quest for vengeance.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Emily's torture outfit includes a black leather smock.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Who knew that Derek Haig could be such a monster?
• High School: Where the first act is set.
• How We Got Here: The film opens with one of the victims in a diner, her face horribly disfigured, with her fellow patrons all staring at her.
• I Gave My Word: Dane promised that he would not kill a single one of the bullies. He keeps his promise, but maybe it would have been better if he hadn't...
• Ironic Echo: Just as the Girl Posse are getting ready for the party, Bridget remarks "Red meat is for people who don't care how they look". In the opening scene, which takes place after her face was disfigured, she orders a burger.
• It's a Costume Party, I Swear: Well, it started out as a costume party...
• Jerk Jock: Bradley and his friends.
• Kids Are Cruel: The bullies are mean just because they are. And, of course, there's the outcasts...
• Lecture as Exposition: The film opens with a High School history teacher describing how the Han Dynasty would sometimes leave their defeated enemies alive, disfiguring them in order to serve as an example to those who would oppose them. Sets the tone rather well for what follows...
• Malevolent Masked Men: The outcasts.
• Monster Clown: Ravi's second costume.
• Nasty Party
• Nice Guy: Kurtis tried his best to be friends to everybody, and defended Ravi from Bradley. As a result, the five try (and fail) to keep him from coming to their "party."
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Despite the film taking place in Texas, Marc Donato makes little effort to hide his Canadian accent, dropping several "aboots" over the course of the film.
• Pay Evil Unto Evil: The five outcasts punish psychological and emotional torture with physical torture.
• Putting on the Reich: Andy's torture outfit is an SS uniform.
• Revenge: The outcasts' plan and motives.
• Say My Name: Near the end, Dane has Bradley strapped to a chair and tells him to say his name. Dane is shocked to learn that, despite Bradley bullying him for years, Bradley does not even know his name.
• Shout-Out: Emily's outfit, and the scene where she tortures the Jerk Jock, are big ones for Audition.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Upbeat banjo music played by one of the five during a torture.
  • The banjo playing reminded this troper a lot of the famous banjo from Deliverance
• Suicide Pact: The five had never intended to live past the night, according to Emily.
• Survivor Guilt: At the end, Kelly, having escaped torture and feeling that her behavior was at least partly responsible for what happened, is seen taking a bunch of pills in order to kill herself.
• Title Drop
• To the Pain: Dane loves telling his tormentors how much they will hurt.
• Token Minority: Ravi.
• Torture Cellar: The Workley ranch house, which was left to Dane in his uncle's will.
• Valley Girl: Again, the Girl Posse.
• The Vietnam War: While running away, Kurtis seeks help from a veteran of an unnamed war that is strongly implied to be Vietnam.
• Villain Protagonist: The five.
• With Us or Against Us
• You Have Failed Me...: Dane murders Ravi after he intentionally drops a key in order to free Kurtis, one of their friends that they hadn't intended to arrive, despite Dane telling him that Kurtis was not to leave.