Girl vs. Monster is a Disney Channel Original Movie that premiered on October 12, 2012. The film stars Olivia Holt as Skylar, a teenage girl who is incapable of feeling fear. The plot kicks off with Skylar and her friends preparing for the ultimate Halloween Party, where she is supposed to sing with a local rock band headed by Love Interest Ryan Dean. Unfortunately, that plan gets derailed when her parents tell her she isn't allowed out on Halloween. When Skylar decides to sneakout anyway, she unknowingly unleashes her own personal monster, discovers that she's a fifth generation monster hunter, and experiences fear for the first time.
This film provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Skylar is a monster hunter.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Henry defeats his personal monster, it pleads with him to be scared of it.
- Alpha Bitch: Myra threatens to ruin Skylar's social life. By the end of the film, they've become friends due to Skylar saving Myra form Deimata.
- As Long as There Is Evil: Deimata sums up the futility of trying to defeat her like this:Deimata: There will always be monsters because there will always be fear. Fear makes the monsters, not the other way around.
- Big Bad: Deimata is fear of The Hero and her release causes the movie's conflict.
- Blessed with Suck: Skylar's inability to feel fear seemed really cool until fifteen years worth of it was unleashed all at once.
- Break Them by Talking: The monsters inspire fear in their hosts this way.
- Demonic Possession: Deimata can possess people.
- Don't Try This at Home: Skylar's gymnastics stunt to fix a crooked banner is lampshaded as a "don't try this at home" moment by Henry. When Myra later attempts the same stunt, in order to avoid asking Skylar for help (and ignoring Ryan's warning), she breaks her neck.
- Easily Forgiven: Justified. Skylar readily forgives Myra for her Alpha Bitch behavior, but she was never that bothered by it in the first place.
- Eldritch Abomination: A minor example. We don't directly see it, but Deimata follows up on her threat of scaring Skylar's parents to death. It involves tentacle things sprouting from her face... and her parents' response is 'That's the best you could come up with?'
- Emotion Eater: Monsters are born from and embody the fears of people and feed off of them. Immortal monsters such as Deimata outlive their hosts and bond themselves to new ones. If a monster is captured, the fear they embody can be suppressed.
- Establishing Character Moment: Skylar's method of fixing the banner in her first scene aptly demonstrates her fearlesness. Inverted in that she spends most of the film after that suffering from crippling terror.
- Fear Is Normal: Skylar delivers An Aesop to this effect in the movie's closing narration. How much weight it carries coming from someone whose fear has been sealed away again (temporarily anyway) is up to the individual viewer.
- Fearless Fool: Skylar seems to be this beginning, like when she's willing to do a dangerous gymnastics stunt in order to straighten a banner, something most people would be discouraged from. note It only works because she's had six-and-a-half years of gymnastics training.
- Heel–Face Turn: Myra starts out as the Alpha Bitch, but eases up on Skylar at the end, accepting her relationship with Ryan and even joining the two of them for a song.
- I Know What You Fear: Each monster is the embodiment of somebody's worst fears and as such, knows all of them.
- I'm Not Afraid of You: Monsters can be defeated this way, if it's done by the person they're haunting.
- Improbably Cool Car: Skylar's parents' 1960s Ford Econoline van.
- It Runs in the Family: Monster hunting for Skylar.
- Literal Metaphor: At one point, Henry is literally paralyzed with fear.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Skylar hadn't cut the power in order to sneak out, she wouldn't have released Deimata.
- Oblivious to Love: At the beginning of the movie, Skylar is completely blind to the fact that Ryan is in love with her, as well as to the fact that he's scared to ask her out. The second one is at least justified, since she has no understanding of fear at all.
- Rousing Speech: "Fearless" is a musical one to Deimata. Skylar was previously too afraid to sing so this act breaks both her fear and Deimata's power.
- Sarcastic Clapping: Deimata does this while possessing Myra when Skylar suffers stage fright.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Deimata. This is the reason Skylar was fearless for fifteen years, as Deimata was the physical embodiment of her fear.
- Sequel Hook: The end credits show Deimata cracking her containment unit just a little, hinting that she may escape.
- Shout-Out: When Deimata meets up with her henchmen after being released, she asks whether Stephen King is still writing books. She then asks if kids still go to see horror movies only to be told that whilst vampires are popular right now, it is the romantic type of vampire. Deimata is disgusted.
- Steampunk: The monster hunting equipment has this look. It's lampshaded.
- The Unintelligible: Myra, while wearing her neck cast is unable to talk.
- What Is This Feeling?: Skyler when she experiences fear for the first time in her life.
