With her Anyone But You press tour and SNL hosting stint in the rearview, Sydney Sweeney is moving on to new projects and appearances .
The actor hit SXSW to promote her latest movie, Immaculate, a horror film that takes place against the backdrop of a convent. Don’t expect Sweeney to be method dressing as a nun for this tour though. Instead, the actor has gone full “final girl” on us.
Sweeney wore a custom Richard Quinn dress to the film’s premiere, styled by Molly Dickson. The ankle-length white dress is made of lace and features draped satin off-the-shoulder sleeves. A slit allowed her to show off a pair of trompe l’oeil boots that look like white lace thigh-high hose worn with pointy-toed pumps. Her sole accessory was a pair of pearl drop earrings.
The ’80s-adjacent look seems a nod to the campy horror movies of yore, with a wink to the contemporary idea of the final girl. While it’s been a longstanding recurrence in the genre, it wasn’t named until 1992, when Carol J. Clover published Men, Women, And Chain Saws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film. The trope refers to the token female survivor in slasher films, which fans may recognize in the Scream, Halloween, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre films. The final girl is usually a virtuous virgin—hence the palate of white lace.
Sweeney’s saccharine look struck a sharp contrast with the hooded figures looming just behind her. It just goes to show that even the final girl needs to watch her back.