You could write a million articles about race and horror cinema. Horror filmmakers often have more freedom to experiment, so the genre has historically served as a space for them to reckon with hot-button topics. (See Night of the Living Dead, which uses a zombie allegory to comment on fear of the “other.”) At the same time, horror is notorious for who gets to hold their own against the killers and who gets twenty minutes of screen time before dropping dead. Typically, “bad girls” – a.k.a. teens who drink, do drugs, and sleep around – are some of the first to go. On top of that, people of color famously get the short end of the stick, seldom scoring the coveted title of “final girl.” And forget about it if you’re a rebellious Black, Latina, Indigenous, or Asian girl. Maybe it’s tokenism, maybe it’s the fact that racialized folds just aren’t getting cast as often as their white counterparts.

But the tides are turning. The roster of reigning scream queens is growing increasingly diverse with Latinas helping to lead the way. So this spooky season, check out these four Latina final girls who have persevered despite the odds, both onscreen and off.

Anya Taylor-Joy

Anya Taylor-Joy first cast her spell on us in Robert Eggers’ debut feature The Witch. As teenage pilgrim Thomasin, she finds herself rethinking her Puritan lifestyle after a demonic presence begins wreaking havoc upon her family’s remote homestead. In real life, Taylor-Joy didn’t grow up in the States at all – she’s of Anglo-Argentine descent and spent the first six years of her life in Buenos Aires before immigrating to the U.K. She grew up speaking Spanish and frequently uses the language in interviews with Latin American outlets. Of her global upbringing, she told People, “I don’t really feel like I belong anywhere, which makes me belong everywhere.”

Over the years, Taylor-Joy has continued to raise our blood pressure in a number of pulse-pounding blockbusters, from the Edgar Wright period piece Last Night in Soho to the culinary thriller The Menu.

Mia Goth

Mia Goth is cinema’s current it girl. Given her starring roles in all three of Ti West’s recent slasher flicks – X, Pearl, and Maxxxine – it seems like everyone knows her name. What fans might not know is that she has Brazilian heritage. Her trajectory is somewhat similar to Anya Taylor-Joy’s: Goth spent her early years in Rio de Janeiro before moving to London in grade school. Talking to Another Magazine, she looked back fondly on her experiences there: “Even as a five-year-old I appreciated the beauty of that place, knew that it was special and that I was lucky and that not everywhere was like this.”

Goth stays in touch with her roots, often citing her grandmother Maria Gladys – a renowned theatrical actress in Brazil – as a career inspiration. On top of that, she has remained fluent in her native Portuguese.

Melissa Barrera

Mexican actress Melissa Barrera got her start in telenovelas before making waves in the U.S. film industry as Lyn in the Starz series Vida. She found a home in the horror genre when she was picked up for the 2022 reboot of the Scream franchise, simply titled Scream. Starring alongside legends from the original film like Neve Cambell and Courteney Cox, she won fans over as Sam Carpenter, Billy Loomis’ estranged daughter. In an interview with Latino Rebels, she shared that she hoped to inspire viewers of color with her portrayal: “For the longest time, we were only thought of as side characters, the best friend, or the one that gets killed off first.”

In 2023, Barrera was fired from the franchise over a social media post condemning Israel’s attacks on Gaza; ever resilient, she’s continued to shine in pictures such as 2024’s Abigail and Your Monster.

Jenna Ortega

Jenna Ortega, born to parents of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage, is the representation goth Latinas have been waiting for. She’s had a penchant for horror films for a while: early in her career, she had supporting roles in sequels to Insidious and The Babysitter. She officially earned her horror laurels when she was cast as Tara Carter, Sam’s little sib, in the Scream series. That’s right – Scream boasted not one but two Latina final girls for two films. The actresses are close offscreen, with Barrera referring to them as “sisters for life.”

Ortega has cornered the market when it comes to spooky media, with roles in X (where she shared the screen with Goth), the Addams Family spinoff Wednesday, and Tim Burton’s long-awaited Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. One of our favorite Latina final girls, she often uses her platform to speak out about navigating the industry as a woman of color. “I want all people of Latin descent to be able to see themselves on screen. I want to feel that I could open doors for other people,” she stated in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar.