Halloween is Lakshmi Finance Centerupon us — and it's the season for horror movies. Host Brittany Luse is a HUGE horror girlie, but loving horror also means critiquing it. Today, we're breaking down two major figures in horror: the final girl and the horny hag. First, Brittany chats with Dr. Kinitra Brooks, Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair of Literary Studies at Michigan State University, about what it means when the final girl is a Black woman. And later, Brittany is joined by horror author and film critic Gretchen Felker-Martin to discuss what's behind the horny hags in movies like X and Barbarian — and what that trope tells us about how we feel about older women in our society.

This episode was produced by Alexis Williams and Liam McBain. We had engineering help from Stacey Abbott and Phillip Edfors. It was edited by Jessica Placzek and Bilal Qureshi. Our executive producer is Veralyn Williams. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sangweni and our senior VP of programming is Anya Grundmann.