...Victoria Pedretti’s portrayal of Love Quinn from Netflix’s You series confronting her murdering, philandering husband, Joe Goldberg. Another example is Natalie Portman’s portrayal of Nina Sayers in Black Swan, a lead professional ballerina who loses herself in exchange for achieving her dreams. This type of rage is considered intense in part due to its taboo nature in western society, women going against the “best practices” and behaving in ways we’d feel more comfortable attributing to a male-coded character. 

The second part of this specific scope, the coming-of-age genre, is defined on MasterClass as, A sub-classification for teen movies in which the story, quote, “follow(s) the lives and adventures of young adults,” unquote, generally involving characteristics like character growth and social commentary while having dialogue heavy plots. Typically the plot follows an outsider breaking into a clique and learning about the high school landscape, including how relationships function, the consequences to certain behaviors, and the social fabrics. I don’t think it’s wild to attribute many high school tropes as mini-versions of adult milestones, an audition for adulthood with less consequences.

Coming-of-rage is a well regarded sub-genre of and includes many huge movies like The Breakfast Club, a 1985 classic John Hughes movie about a group of high school peers spending Saturday in detention. Starring Molly Ringwald as popular in pink Claire Standish, Ally Sheedy as quiet outcast Allison Reynolds, Emilio Estevez (Em-il-io Es-tey-vez) as popular jock Andrew Clark, Judd Nelson as bad boy John Bender punching the sky in triumph by the end of the movie, and Anthony Michael Hall as the nerdy Brian Johnson, endearing and relatable.

Another coming of age staple is the 1995 movie, Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone (Aly-sha) as Cher Horowitz, Stacey Dash as Cher’s best friend Dionne Davenport, Paul Rudd as Cher’s step brother Josh, Brittany Murphy as new girl Tai, and Donald Faison (Fay-sen) as Dionne’s boyfriend Murray. The comedy laden plot follows teenage Cher as she faces challenges specific to Beverly Hills but relatable to teen girls.

Later in 2004 Mean Girls came out with a similar focus but this time we follow the new girl, Cady Heron played by Lindsay Lohan, as she infiltrates the school’s top clique, the Plastics, including Rachel McAdams as Regina George, Amanda Seyfried as Karen Smith, and Lacey Chabert (Shuh-bear) as Gretchen Wieners. In a more serious summer break example Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants came out in 2005 based on a tight-knit friend group that spent the break apart but sent a pair of magical pants back and forth with updates about their adventures. Coming of age has taken many forms but from here on out we’ll be looking at examples of Feminine Coming of Rage Horror. 

This type of horror is obviously rage filled, sometimes internal and other times external. It also includes psychological elements and lessons that pertain to womanhood and what it means to be a woman. 

I’m sure many examples exist, maybe even better examples, but the ones in this series include more than one personal favorite: Carrie 1976, Heathers 1989, The Craft 1996, The Rage: Carrie 2 1999 all in this article and then part 2 of the series will cover Ginger Snaps 2000, Jennifer’s Body 2009, Tragedy Girls 2017, Totally Killer 2023, and finally Lisa Frankenstein 2024. The movies will be in chronological order and timestamps will be included in the description if you’re only interested in certain movie’s analyses.

...through individual trial and error and through forced social spaces like work and school, both not included in part one. Trial and error from experiences, anecdotal included, can heavily inform the choices of women based on the positive or negative outcomes. For example, dating best practices for women are generally derived from one’s own dating experiences combined with those of trusted women who share do’s and don’ts.

Work or school spaces that are somewhat necessary to exist within have a varying degree of issues that women face and how they are taught to deal with such issues. For example, some communities prefer issues between women to be dealt with in a street fight whereas others prefer to deal with issues through passive aggression or repetitional attacks. The spaces can greatly inform how women believe they should behave, and unrequested feedback is often given to young girls and women. Feminism is another through-thread of modern womanhood that prescribes not only individual lifestyle directives but greater womanhood ones as well. As feminism became a more solid ideology represented by organizations and centralized beliefs it became easier to identify what you were quote-unquote "supposed to do" as well as what would fall outside that norm.

Britannica defines feminism as, "-the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes...manifested, worldwide and... represented by various institutions...on behalf of women's rights and interests." With equality being defined as equal treatment, status and/or freedom from discrimination. Four distinct waves of feminism are identified on History.com as the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Waves. The First is thought to be from the 1800s through the 1920s and centered around women's suffrage. Following that the Second Wave from the 1960s to 1980s became a notable time of women pushing back on the confines of gender roles as wives and mothers.

Once women's issues turned from basic rights and respect to issues that thrived in the shadows like the patriarchy as a system, sexual assault by members of the government like Anita Hill's testimony against Clarence Thomas who went on to become a Supreme Court justice. This era is marked by Riot Grrl music, girl pop artists, and eras of fashion aesthetics like grunge that attempted to take attention away from women's bodies. The fourth wave is more nebulous and less defined as of now, but the #MeToo movement of 2017 is mentioned as a shift in women's issues, which I'll discuss more about later.

Carrie, Heathers, The Craft, and Carrie 2 all picked up feminine coming of rage story elements and wove them together into somewhat unique horror movies. Powers are a major through thread in this subgenre, many stories having the central focus of gaining power, liking it, and being easily corrupted by it or not being responsible with it. Part two movies are Jennifer’s Body, Tragedy Girls, Totally Killer, and Lisa Frankenstein, all four also including power struggles and supernatural powers similar to the movies in part one and also movies that fall into the Feminine Coming of Rage Horror genre. Womanhood in the part one movies also heavily relies on relationships with other women to indicate whether someone is an example or a cautionary tale. It’s tied to sex as mentioned earlier as well as the onset of puberty and that specific time period in a woman’s life plus the struggles she may face during it.

Society benefits from a large variety of portrayals of stories as well as exhibiting common experiences that most of us share and in the horror genre specifically showing how an array of things can be horrifying and fantastical. On the flip side these portrayals of women and specifically female coming of rage horror can be alienating to some audiences as a wide swath of people have limited if any experience with the gender specific occurrences like periods and friendships between women. In addition to this drawback these movies can also play into stigma if misunderstood or done poorly.

It’s a genre that I have loved enjoying and have always been interested in exploring more, even just to understand my own high school obsessions with some of them. In the next article I’ll be doing an analysis of each movie similar to this article and write a summation of what I found out about the feminine coming of rage genre and if it’s even enough of a thing to warrant a sub genre of its own.

So much change has occured in the last 2 decades that I don’t think we’ve fully caught up yet. Despite this the change has ushered in new hopes and possibilities like that of a Kamala Harris president following Brat Summer when we all binged Love Island USA. In many ways the rage now is like that of Totally Killer, more focused and controlled, moving towards a purpose rather than the wilder stories of Ginger Snaps and Jennifer’s Body.

Rage and horror will always go hand in hand, the horrifying occurrences often inciting righteous anger from those experiencing it. But the brand of rageful horror in the feminine coming of age horror stories is an especially thought-provoking subgenre to enjoy. The stories of young women finding themselves not because of but in spite of awful events is a testament of the power we see in real life young women and their stories. Right now, in the US women’s issues are focused on restoring the right to reproductive freedom which is very much on the ballot this November, which BTW if you aren’t registered to vote, please do, and please vote, no matter whom you vote for.