She’s not just the cunt you married… she’s a gay icon, a cold, calculated narrator and a true pioneer for evil women everywhere. There’s no one quite like the ‘good for her’ evil woman pioneer: Amy Dunne (Gone Girl).
Pioneer, yes, because for decades in cinema men have had multiple ‘he’s so me’ evil self-inserts. Tyler Durden (Fight Club). Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver). Patrick Bateman (American Psycho). Jordan Belfort (Wolf of Wall Street). We’ve all heard a guy with some pretty embarrassing tattoos and a slight Miller Light addiction herald at least one of these fictional characters as deeply inspirational for their life.
No judgement here, there’s something so deliciously naughty about secretly admiring someone we shouldn’t… everyone likes a bad boy. But everyone likes a bad girl too, no?
The secret sauce in the success of the ‘he’s so me evil man’ soup was that they weren’t truly villains. They were so baked in main character energy that their villainy was brushed off as a necessary evil to becoming a better man. Violence, misogyny and delusion were overlooked because audiences could self-insert themselves into these characters and imagine the lengths they would go to be the hero of their own narrative. I mean, we all saw men parading round in 2019 in their best Joker makeup… and he’s a mass murdering clown.
So, I return to my previous question… everyone likes a bad girl too, no? Yet up until 2014 women didn’t have their Travis Bickle or Tyler Durden. Where was our bombshell diva in high heels pulling a Patrick Bateman on Wall Street?
As good as Carrie is, being bullied into oblivion and then covered in blood throwing boys around a high school gymnasium is kind of hard to relate to or ‘she’s so me’ it. No one really wants a man tied up in their basement like Cathy Bates in Misery… unless that’s your thing, I guess?
Sure there was Alex Forrest (Fatal Attraction), Regina George (Mean Girls), Jennifer Check (Jennifer’s Body) and Nina Sayers (Black Swan). Iconic characters sure, but lacking in that IT factor that Travis Bickle and Tyler Durden had. Whilst these women were foundational, they didn’t quite balance their evilness with main character energy to truly connect on a cultural level.
What’s most infuriating is that these women became iconic retroactively. So many women today claim to be Regina George, Megan Thee Stallion going so fair as to dub herself, “ the black Regina George.” Jennifer’s Body in 2009 was a complete flop, but in 2026? Try walking down the street at Halloween without seeing a blue and yellow uniform covered in blood.
So, whilst their moment eventually came, there was a vacancy in the cinematic landscape for a evil, wicked main character that complex and misunderstood women could proclaim, ‘she’s so me.’
That’s where we circle back to our favorite slicked blonde bobbed, icy cold calculated ‘cool girl’ herself… Amy Dunne. A true wicked woman, and a pioneer in spearheading the ‘that’s so me’ movement for women and cinephiles everywhere.
What makes Amy Dunne so relatable is that just like Tyler Durden and Travis Bickle before her, she’s simply doing bad things to get what she wants. Amy Dunne won, or at least controlled the narrative to get what she wants, morals and reputation be damned. The evil scheming, the kidnapping masterplan, the ultimate murdering were all in service of getting her perfect family and the child she desired, and she achieved it.
These psychotic characteristics are softened by a female author who understands the humiliation of being treated as nothing by a man, having your dreams treated as just that… dreams. Flynn reframes Amy’s narrative less as a psychotic woman and more as a woman pushed to the brink by the patriarchy. So in all honesty… valid reaction, Amy.
In the same vein that Travis Bickle’s loneliness or Tyler Durden’s nihilism became rallying cries for young men, Amy Dunne’s ‘Cool Girl’ monologue became a rallying cry for women. The recounting of the ways in which women flatten their lives to fold into the mould is both horrifying and a call to arms. Rosamund Pike spits out the lines so bitterly that her “Fuck You!” war cry to lazy men sings like the sweet melodies of a Sabrina Carpenter track. It’s powerful, evocative and camp enough to cement itself in pop culture as the first breakthrough domino to fall in the pantheon of ‘she’s so me’ evil women.
And since Amy Dunne, oh, those dominoes have been dropping like flies…
Since kicking down the door, or rather stabbing the door with a letter opener then shaking her bloody bob, Amy Dunne has amassed quite the 2014 Taylor Swift girl squad of ‘she’s so me’ evil women. Whilst Amy’s evilness was tied to rebellion against patriarchy, we have since seen countless variations of female villainy as relatable. Whether lesbian spies, superheroic witches, demonic soccer teammates or women pushed to the brink… we’ve quite the roster built up now.
I’ve assembled a squad of some of my favorite heroines to follow in the bloodied footsteps of the ‘cool girl’ herself in a section I’ve aptly titled….
Amy: Into the Dunneverse
Villanelle – Killing Eve
Villanelle is probably the most unhinged of the Amy Dunne acolytes. A true sociopath. She has the icy cold yet camp demeanor, the theatricality and the perfect slicked back blonde hair like Dunne herself. However, what makes Villanelle such a perfect follow up to Amy Dunne is that where there’s an underlying evil to Amy Dunne, an unsettling sadness, Villanelle is so gleefully, deliciously unhinged that she stands apart.
She’s big, performative and waltzing round Europe in big, pink floofy dresses… the perfect combination of Amy Dunne and Cruella DeVille… and what a delicious combo that is. Couple that with Jodie Comer’s excellent accent work and a lesbian love story, how could you not love Villanelle… in all her murderous sociopathic glory?
Pearl – Pearl
Ah, our favorite meme queen. You couldn’t get anywhere in 2020 without an iconic clip of Mia Goth wailing with tears down her cheeks.
What makes Pearl stand out in the post-‘good for her’ Amy Dunne-verse is that she’s so earnest. Pearl isn’t dictated by a man, or pushed to the brink so that she has to go mad… she simply, as she says in her iconic quote, ‘wants to be a star,’ and she’ll do anything to get it. I mean who amongst us hasn’t daydreamed of being the main character of some big, flashy Hollywood premiere. Pearl’s done it, we’ve done it, and that makes her one of the biggest and most relatable ‘she’s so me’ characters in the Dunneverse.
Wanda Maximoff – The Marvel Cinematic Universe
Ok, whilst Pearl and Villanelle may have been cult classics – defined almost entirely by their gay fanbases, with Wanda Maximoff we have a ‘she’s so me’ anti-heroine leading the charge in one of the biggest franchises in the world… that’s history! What makes Wanda Maximoff so iconic is that we slowly watched her become a part of the ‘she’s so me’ Dunneverse. A secondary player in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, often categorized as a scared young magic user, until the culture-shifting mega-hit WandaVision hoisted her off the bench of the Marvel Universe and became a defining anti-heroine in the sisterhood. To see the grief, loss and devastation corrupt her from superhero to witchy villain was fascinating in showing the lengths we will go to to get what we want back. In Wanda’s case: her family and the life she had envisioned for herself.
I mean, who wouldn’t brainwash a whole town to pretend to be in the Brady Bunch for just one day? I know I would.
YellowJackets
Ah-ha! Now we get into our ‘yeahhh, I gotta put me first,’ section of the list starting with our favorite 22 member-ed girl-squad of evil, ravenous cannibal soccer players. Sure, they’re eating each other, hunting each other for sport and viciously torturing their gay, disabled coach… but as Coco Jones said… ‘you would do it too for a check.’ These girls have to survive and in this big bad world of ours sometimes you have to go to some crazy lengths to do just that. They simply ‘gotta put themselves first.’
It is absolutely absurd the lengths the writers of Yellowjackets will go to to manipulate the viewer into genuinely rooting for these evil girls to kill each other off and feast on their bones. It’s twisted, its sick but its so effective in making you go ‘yeah, she’s so me,’ as they do the worst imaginable things.
Even more exciting with Yellowjackets is that it’s not just our young group of teens committing evil crimes, but another set of 6 women in their older fifties equally committing heinous crimes… YES! In ten years, we’ve gone from one thirty-something woman defined by patriarchal rage to a whole show of bisexual evil soccer playing girls and middle-aged women committing equally heinous acts in the real world.
So a huge kudos must be given to David Fincher and Rosamund Pike because without them we couldn’t quite have a character like Shauna Shipman… or as the internet has aptly dubbed her, “Shaunnibal Lector.”
Linda Liddle – Send Help
Finally, Rachel McAdams you can most certainly sit with us. The newest addition to the ‘Cool Girl’ club, no pun intended, is an addition from visionary director and final girl extraordinare Sam Raimi. With Send Help, Rachel McAdams expertly picks up the bloody crown from Rosamund Pike as the woman scorned by men in her life driven to the brink of psychosis… but ultimately winning at the end of the day! She’s unhinged, murderous, but at the end of the day completely lovable and relatable as the heroine of the tale. From Regina George to Linda Liddle, in the famous words of Natalie Nunn, “mind you you’re also a baddie, come on in (to the evil ‘she’s so me hall of fame, Rachel McAdams).
So to conclude, in a very short yet impactful twelve years we’ve finally built up enough of a roster of evil women to rival the decade’s long list of evil men that have been aspirational for men in cinema. From cannibalistic soccer players, to witchy demonic superheroines, scarecrow attracted farm girls and everything in between, everyone young girl out there has their very own ‘freak’ to call their hero. Yet, all these characters wouldn’t quite have the shoulders to stand on without one ‘cool girl’ faking a kidnapping and a pregnancy to get her dream life in 2014.
So here’s to Amy Dunne, the eternal cool girl and the true pioneer of the ‘she’s so me’ evil girl movement… long may she terrorize!
— Darragh Evans