Due to this characterization, critics have called Iliadis' version of the character as following aspects of the "final girl" archetype, contrasting with her original depiction.

In this film, Mari is an upper-class sheltered teenaged girl going to a rock concert in a city with her friend Phyllis to celebrate her seventeenth birthday.

Due to the widespread media coverage of Krug's recent escape from police custody, the criminals decide to kidnap them and steal Mari's car to leave town.

[1] Returning to New York after a cross-country road trip, Peabody was originally asked by the film makers to audition for the role of Phyllis after responding to casting notice in the trade publication Backstage.

[2] Craven stated, "I liked Sandra Peabody a lot; I thought she was very pretty, and very plucky... because she was a very young actress, she wasn't nearly as confident and easy going as Lucy was, and she had become involved in something very, very rough.

In this way, Craven has molded Mari to be something of an avatar for how he views the “Love Generation”; inexperienced balls of flesh who think their hippie posturing will save them from society's wolves.

"[9] Despite the intense subject matter, Paxton described her experience on set as a positive one and when asked about what it was like to work with the producers Wes Craven and Jonathan Craven, she stated: Dennis Iliadis, the director of the 2009 film, wanted to add more characterization and depth to the character of Mari and revealed that the writers decided to make her a competitive swimmer which attributes to her character development and survival later on in the film.

In an interview, Iliadis stated: Film critic Ann Hornaday likened her to horror genre heroines Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) of Halloween (1978).

"[12] In a detailed analysis, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas notes that the 2009 version of the character, unlike the original incarnation, exhibits traits of the "final girl" trope.

Heller-Nicholas attributes this to her disinterest in drugs and her proactive nature during her abduction, highlighting that she purposefully lures the villains to her house as means of getting her parents to save her.

Mari is not so much a rape survivor as she is the walking dead, whose only function is to provide her parents (specifically her father) with a motivation for violent and spectacular vengeance.