Hot Final Girl Summer: Your Summerween Movie Guide!

We are now more than halfway to Halloween — in fact, it’s creeping closer every day! Just like your favorite stalker villains.

It’s long been a reality that scary movies aren’t just for the fall anymore. Practically every holiday has their own horror hit, and with retail stores inching up their displays month by month, by the time October hits, the Christmas elves are already taking over! But no season’s horror movies make you sweat under the collar quite like summer flicks.

Summer is a time for blockbuster action! It’s a time for vacations, rest, and fun in the sun. Well, no one told these 10 frightening films, which want to remind you not to let your guard down. Looking for something to watch on a warm night under the stars? Pack your bags for slasher summer camps, road trips gone wrong, and creepy woodland cabins — we’ve got your Summerween streaming (and screaming) guide right here.

---

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Let’s start with the slasher that’s on everyone’s minds right now. Before you step into an air conditioned cinema, you have to pay homage to the classic I Know What You Did Last Summer. Originally released in 1997, the film was written by Kevin Williamson of Scream fame. It also stars Jennifer Love Hewitt alongside pop culture power couple Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar, who would go on to feature in Scooby-Doo and all of our #CoupleGoals.

The film takes place during 4th of July celebrations in Southport, North Carolina, one year after a group of teenagers hit a pedestrian on the road with their car and dump his body in the ocean. The mysterious slasher wields a hook, perfect for the nautical seaside setting — plus it plays on urban legends of hook-handed murderers. It doesn’t necessarily retread any new slasher movie territory, but it gave us plenty of iconic moments, from, “What are you waiting for?” to Helen Shivers’ not-so-final girl chase sequence.

The movie went on to spawn a few immediate sequels (I Still Know and I’ll Always Know) and a TV reboot before the 2025 legacy sequel, but the original is still considered the best of those for its beloved teen cast, moody atmosphere, and summer setting. Its original release was met with lukewarm reaction, although it’s since gone on to be one of the top grossing slashers of all time.

---

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

If you love self-aware horror films but want a healthy dose of comedy to balance out the creep factor, take a look at Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. It’s the perfect cabin in the woods movie for everyone who watches scary movies thinking, “Yeah, I’d absolutely never go into a haunted house. Do better, protagonists.”

The film stars Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine as a pair of harmless hillbillies who are mistaken for chainsaw-wielding killers by a group of college kids on a camping trip in West Virginia. Twenty years prior, a Memorial Day Massacre occurred in the same woods, making everyone on edge about murderous woodsmen lurking about. Meanwhile, Tucker and Dale are just trying to spruce up their recently purchased abandoned cabin. What could go wrong?

This hilarious horror film is a Rube Goldberg machine of chaos and out-of-context moments becoming completely overblown. Don’t get us wrong, there is definitely a body count by the end of it — but so much trouble could have been avoided with good communication. Then again … isn’t that true of everyday life?

---

The Cabin in the Woods

Another horror comedy set in, well, a cabin in the woods, Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods took the horror movie formula to its scientific extremes. It’s a critique on “torture porn” as well as a satire on the slasher genre as a whole, showing an underground laboratory operation working to engineer the perfect movie-like circumstances to appease the Ancient Ones, cruel unseen deities who require ritual sacrifice based on human archetypes.

The cast is filled with notable faces from the genre as well as longtime Whedon collaborators: Bradley Whitford, Chris Hemsworth, Amy Acker, Sigourney Weaver, and Fran Kranz, just to name a few. Odds are you’ve already heard a lot about this film as one of the most popular modern meta-horror movies, but we don’t want to spoil every fun detail just in case you’re new to this one.

Given its broad swings at the genre, there’s something fun for every type of slasher fan in The Cabin in the Woods. And it all starts with five friends taking a little vacation…

---

Wrong Turn

The Wrong Turn franchise has spawned multiple sequels and remakes in its lifetime — who knew this many people refused to stop and ask for directions? In the 2003 original, Eliza Dushku goes from Slayer to survivor as the star of this horror flick set in West Virginia. A group of camping college students are waylaid when their vehicle hits barbed wire on a desolate road. But the murderous mountain men this group of young adults encounters aren’t nearly as funny and charming as Alan Tudyk.

One Eye, Saw Tooth, and Three Finger are the names given to the trio of cannibal killers who take down the kids one by one. The designs for the villains are grotesque and frightening, and the scares are tense. It’s clear the cannibals know their way around the woods a lot better than the kids do. And yet another rickety cabin forms the backdrop for much of the film’s plotting and climax.

Given local folklore, general prejudices people have about “mountain folk,” and the dense, isolated topography of the setting, the Appalachian region proves fertile ground for woodland horror.

---

Deliverance

All it takes is a memorable theme to get a horror movie stuck in people’s minds — and “Dueling Banjos” is undeniably that (final) girl. But this recognizable song isn’t the only thing audiences fear about Deliverance. Frantic, rattling banjos are just the start to this infamous wilderness survival film.

Based on the novel by James Dickey, Deliverance stars Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Jon Voight, and Ronny Cox as four friends who escape from the city for a weekend of river rafting. Sounds simple enough, but at Lewis’ insistence, the men choose a particularly remote and treacherous section of the Cahulawassee River in Georgia. Despite ominous warnings by locals, the men’s lighthearted buddy adventure quickly unravels into a harrowing tale of violation and violence.

Deliverance is not for the fainthearted but it is a great alternative to that canoe trip you’ve been meaning to take.

---

Friday the 13th

But which Friday the 13th, you might ask. Take your pick! You can’t go wrong with the 1980 original if you’re looking for true summer camp action. Of course, most fans of the franchise are looking to see Jason take a stab at clearing bunks full of rowdy, horny teenagers. But we’d be remiss not to acknowledge the true “mommy fearest” Pamela Voorhees, the OG killer. Come on, that’s barely a spoiler by this point, right?

Whatever your choice, the F13 franchise is chock-full of summer camp staples, including kayaking on the lake, curling up in your sleeping bags, and getting impaled by tree limbs and harpoons. There’s a good reason any later horror flick set at a summer camp getaway has been compared to Friday the 13th — just ask Sleepaway Camp, Fear Street: 1978, Camp Hell, and more. Murder and vengeance run hard in this family!

---

Jaws

You’re gonna need a bigger couch when Jaws is on your July movie marathon list! The thriller film that gave sharks a bad name, this one is about as summery as it gets. The “horror” factor of course comes from the very real fear of sharks that many have (as well as some sweet submechanophobia), though others recognize that Jaws tends to blow the situation out of proportion (and out of the water).

The New England summer resort town of Amity Island is beset by a shark attack in its waters, but the mayor refuses to acknowledge it. He knows that’s instant death for their tourism — never mind for the tourists who end up chum in the water. A police chief, a marine biologist, and a shark hunter then play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the toothy terror, with many iconic moments that made a massive splash in the pop culture scene. We don’t have to tell you how that goes, of course.

But given the Mayor’s role in the movie, it’s worth considering that the real villain of this flick is capitalism… (cue evil metaphorical mustache twirl).

---

Sleepaway Camp

A problematic fave in many ways, audiences have embraced Sleepaway Camp‘s, well, camp factor while also examining it critically as the years go by. This 1983 film has become an undeniable cult classic, and its twist ending is often lauded as one of the most shocking in the history of the horror genre (and cinema in general). We won’t spoil it here, but you may already be familiar with its controversy on the subject of gender representation. Still, if you are earnestly interested and don’t already know about the film’s ending, best to go in with a blank slate.

Sleepaway Camp often gets compared to Friday the 13th for the superficial similarities of a slasher taking down unsuspecting kids and teens at a lakeside camp. And while it is hard to step to the genre titan that is Jason Voorhees, Sleepaway Camp still offers plenty of gruesome (if sometimes schlocky) kills and plenty of potent quotables not fit for repeating here. A series of sequels followed in its wake with some continuity shared between them via the character of Angela, but these later installments tried to veer more towards satire than straight horror, to mixed results.

---

Midsommar

Even if you’re not up to date on the latest horror films, you’ve likely seen Florence Pugh‘s sobbing face on the Midsommar poster, or even more prominently, her face surrounded by flowers as she’s crowned the May Queen. Midsommar is a folk horror flick, far more colorful than most of the other fare on this list. It’s directed by Ari Aster, who also struck gold with Hereditary, another A24 prestige hit.

Midsommar takes place in rural Sweden, with elements of terror and psychological drama stemming from the trauma of a murder-suicide, cult rituals, and the breakdown of a dying relationship. The grieving Dani, her emotionally distant boyfriend Christian, and their friends Mark and Josh all end up visiting a Swedish commune during a nine-day midsummer festival and are drawn into strange, dangerous rituals that end up costing some of them their lives. And while its scares aren’t all in line with the typical slasher formula, it manages to deliver some of the most gruesome kills in recent memory.

---

The Lost Boys

Oh, I still believe — that Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys is one of the best vampire movies of all time. Don’t stake me! Its cultural significance can’t be denied, with nods from later filmmakers like Jordan Peele and Taika Waititi, its re-vamping of the bloodsuckers’ signature look for years to come, and the fact it’s getting a Broadway musical soon. Yeah, really.

When Michael and Sam Emerson move with their mother to the beachside town of Santa Carla, California, they all fall into the dark underbelly of the boardwalk — a vampire biker gang, comic store slayers, and a dubious helping of Chinese takeout that’s enough to make anyone’s stomach turn. It captures the rowdy spirit of the ’80s along with allusions to Peter Pan, and gave us David, Kiefer Sutherland’s bad boy supreme. Accompanied by a rockin’ soundtrack and an eerie original instrumental score, The Lost Boys is an audio-visual delight of horror and humor that never gets old.

---

What other hot season horror films do you think should be on this Summerween list? Or would you prefer a chilling winter lineup to keep your weather woes at bay?

Join the conversation alongside other horror fans over at Sideshow Social Network or in side.show/geekgroup, and don’t forget to Let Your Geek Sideshow!