I remember when I was younger, anytime I watched a movie where the characters have to kill a scary monster/alien, I always thought the act of killing it was intended to be part of the horror. Like there’s this amazing creature that we’ve never seen before, and maybe under different circumstances we could’ve coexisted with it, but it’s trying to attack you and you have to defend yourself, but by destroying it you also destroy the ability to ever understand it and that’s sad and is supposed to make you feel conflicted.
It was not until well into my adulthood that I realized most people do not have complicated feelings about movies where people have to kill a scary alien monster, nor is that necessarily meant to be part of the narrative (unless it very obviously is). They just want the scary thing to die because it’s scary. I don’t have a real conclusion to this I just started thinking about it for some reason.
Ok but I think there should be at least one movie where that's an obvious part of the narrative.
Imagine a final girl that is weeping not just because she watched all her friends die, but she's a conservationist that now has to kill the first and last example of an unknown predator.
Imagine her and the other victims realizing over time that the creature is intelligent, and that the dumb jock fucked it up for all of them because he killed a smaller version (that turned out to be a baby) and thus gave momma a grudge.
Imagine her sadly murmuring "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." While pulling the trigger on an elephant gun at the last possible second.
Imagine an epilogue scene where she is consulting on the taxidermy of the creatures at a natural history museum. And she insists they be posed not as ferocious predators but as a mother and child at play.
Then imagine a sequel where the driving tension is she is desperately trying to capture a live specimen.
