In the horror genre, specifically in the sub genre of slasher there is a very specific type of survivor. Final Girls are typically the protagonist, a young woman targeted by a violent entity, or regular killer, who has to fight against all odds to make it out alive. They are the ultimate survivor, but sometimes, their outliving the villain is a result of luck and a lot of help, not necessarily their own skills.
Final Girls aren't unlike Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games. Of course, Katniss relies on her bow and arrow and her own knowledge of surviving in the wild. She also manages to outwit those in charge of the game, banking on the game makers wanting to have some sort of victor rather than allowing the audience to see both of the finalists die on screen. Not every Final Girl would have the wits to make that call. So, which Final Girl is most likely to survive the arena?
Alice Hardy
Alice Hardy survives a lot of the events of Friday The 13th as a result of pure luck. She doesn't actually face off against Jason Voorhees initially, but his mother.
Alice fights her admirably, using whatever objects are at her disposal as weapons, and she manages to survive. That would be a good tactic to have - if Alice made it out of the initial cornucopia confrontation. Katniss recognizes that the opening of the games is always a "bloodbath" as tributes fight for supplies. The most impulsive try to get supplies out from under the hands of the more skilled career tributes, which leads to their deaths. Alice would likely fall at the cornucopia, trying to find something to help her survive instead of running away.
Sally Hardesty
Sally is another Final Girl who gets very lucky. Things tend to go her way while everyone else around her falls. There is one sequence in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre which demonstrates her firm resolve, and makes her outlast Alice.
Sally is able to pull herself together enough to get through the famous dinner scene with her captors. She is able to play along and buy herself just a little more time. Mentally, Sally would be tough enough to get through the first few rounds of deaths in the arena, but she wouldn't ultimately take out her opponents to win it all.
Julie James
Julie James makes a big mistake in I Know What You Did Last Summer, and it haunts her. When she and her high school friends are out driving, they hit someone, and though she doesn't want to, she goes along with the plan to dispose of the person's body. A year later, she has to continually fight for her survival as the person stalks and kills her friends one by one.
Julie isn't afraid to fight back, which is a point in her favor. She does, after all, go through the ordeal of taking on a known killer twice. The trouble is, Julie doesn't actually get to do much fighting. More often than not, it's her high school boyfriend who fights her battles after she's done her best to confront the bad guy. That makes it likely that Julie would think she could fight her way out of the arena, but she'd be cut down by the opposition.
Grace Le Domas
A more recent addition to the long line of Final Girls, Grace is tough, but not tough enough to make it to the end. She's certainly capable of killing someone, or at the very least incapacitating them in self defense, but she doesn't actually do very much of that.
Instead, Grace relies on the Le Domas family to take each other out in Ready Or Not. She does a lot of running. One thing in her favor is that she's not especially trusting after what she's gone through, so she would look at any alliance as a possible betrayal. That might help her stay alive longer.
Nancy Thompson
Nancy isn't the only young woman to face off against Freddy, but she's certainly one of the most remembered from the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. No matter what horrors are thrown her way, she keeps going.
It's Nancy's intuition that allows her to fight off Freddy, and it might help her stay alive for a little while in the arena. She has good instincts about who can be trusted and how her plans might need to change. She might not be quite tough enough to outlast the top half of the Final Girls in question though.
Jess Bradford
Often termed as the original slasher flick, Black Christmas features one of the first Final Girls in movie history. Jess is tough, but she doesn't just fight back; Jess looks out for everyone.
When her sorority is in danger, Jess takes it upon herself to seek out each of her sisters so they have a chance to team up and survive. She would be the queen of making alliances in the arena. It's just a matter of whether those alliances would be enough to save her when she started speaking out about the injustices of the Capitol on camera. Her actions would mean a lack of sponsors, and it would also mean that career tributes who wanted to curry favor with the Capitol would target her.
Sidney Prescott
She might be the most famous of the '90s horror Final Girls. There's no doubting the Scream protagonist is a compassionate survivor. Even after all the darkness in her life, she becomes a crisis counselor to help other young woman. Sidney would certainly be able to garner a lot of sympathy from the audience of the games while she fought for her life.
While Sidney isn't afraid to fight back, it's making the first move that would be her weakness. Sidney isn't someone who is going to kill in cold blood. All of her moves would be in self defense, and that could cost her.
Kirsty Cotton
Kirsty is one of the few Final Girls who would have enough wits about her in the arena to play the viewers the same way Katniss did. While Katniss had to affect a romance to garner sympathy, Hellraiser's Kirsty managed to utilize Pinhead's puzzle box and bargain for her soul - repeatedly.
Not only does Kirsty defeat her murderous uncle, but she does it more than once. She manages to fool beings from Hell into thinking she's on their side. Kirsty even, in the final installment of her story, murders five people and pins everything on her cheating husband, bargaining again for her own soul while she does. She is a true survivor and a master manipulator. There are only two final girls who might be able to outmatch her.
Erin Harson
You're Next takes the idea of a Final Girl and drastically changes it. Most Final Girls don't know what to expect when thrust into the horrible. That's not true of Erin, who is raised by a survivalist and knows exactly how to handle herself.
Erin would have no problem setting traps for her fellow tributes or taking them out head-on - whichever approach worked best. She's pragmatic and prepared for the worst, so she wouldn't be fooled into thinking getting supplies at the cornucopia was necessary, and she wouldn't make alliances with those she couldn't take down herself. Erin would absolutely be the victor in the arena, which begs the question of why she's in the number two spot...
Laurie Strode
Laurie Strode might just be the most iconic Final Girl of all time. Nothing, not even a seemingly impossible to kill brother, can stop her from living her life.
Laurie isn't the type of person who's going to be willing to spend her time in an arena hunting down other innocent people. Instead, she'd have a plan to get out. This is the same woman who, in one of the many sequels to Halloween, faked her own death so she could start a family, but still had a plan in place to defeat her brother 20 years after facing him the first time. Laurie would absolutely be able to trick officials into believing she was dead, and escape all of the carnage to find a way to stop it.