Book Review: Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Sally Hardesty. Laurie Strode. Nancy Thompson. Sidney Prescott. These names are hallowed upon the ground that horror fans walk, their screams encapsulated in the film cells and hearts of theater goers nationwide. These names are of the Final Girls, the women who survived the Chainsaw Massacre, the Babysitter Murders, the Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Screaming of their respective movies. These are the women who, beyond all hope, beyond all reason, change the perspective of the audience goer from cheering for the killer, to cheering even louder for the heroine.

The term, Final Girl, was coined by Carol J. Clover, who published ‘Men, Women, And Chainsaws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film’ in 1992, changing the landscape in which we talk about horror and it’s societal implications forever. Lambasted for its abusive take on violence against women, Clover argued that the horror film (especially the modern slasher), was arguably one of the most feminist narratives one could tell in the cinema. In a male-dominated (at least at the time of the theory) genre such as the slasher film, the audiences ability to be ‘gender neutral’ with their sympathies, to be fluid enough to see themselves as both the monstrous and as the victimized, and for the climax, to revel in the reversal of roles, was tantamount to the genre.

And so, almost twenty years after the theory, and almost six decades after the first slasher (Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’), we have book after book which revels in the trope, some better than others, but all worth the read.

‘The Final Girl Support Group’ by Grady Hendrix is a mix of movie analysis, who-dun-it hijinks, and high octane terror. Encapsulated within essentially a singular chase scene, the book introduces us to Lynnette Tarkington, herself a Final Girl who has been harassed, poked at, and celebrated by the world at large. She finds solace, however fleeting, in a support group of other Final Girls: women who have survived their own massacres and have lived to tell the tale, if not to everyone to at least each other. In this world, ‘Halloween’ and ‘Friday the 13th’ only exist as movies based off of these girl’s real-life experiences, an interesting take on familiar stories that we all know and love (or scream at).

When one of the Final Girls misses a meeting, things begin to unravel. Lynnette’s paranoia turns to 11, and her quest for survival brings us to a harrowing chase that continues for a majority of the book. Who can she trust? Who is the killer of killer killers? Is it a Final Girl, the therapist, or someone outside the flock?

Grady Hendrix basks in the tropes and his own fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants narrative. It’s messy, it’s adventurous, it’s bullets and bodies and blood. This is slasher schlock at its finest (if schlock can ever be fine).

This topic of the Final Girl has been done before, with more nuance and depth. Riley Sager’s ‘Final Girls’ is brilliant, with a more mystery imbued narrative that cuts into its characters and finds out what makes them tick. Stephen Graham Jones, even in his male-forward cast of ‘The Only Good Indians’, does a stunning trick of the wrist, and does more for the Final Girl trope in literature in his last 60 pages than most other books do with a full 300 pages.

But, ‘The Final Support Group’ isn’t that, and it doesn’t want to be. It’s brash, not brainy. It’s fun, not philosophical. And sometimes, that is what you want. 

Sometimes, horror doesn’t need to be as sharp as a knife to still cut.

Best Enjoyed When –

A slumber party with your friends during a thunder storm, or sipping on a pumpkin spice latte, pretending that Florida has seasons.

Best Enjoyed With –

A fun, porch pounder red – such as the  Ercole Barbera del Monferrato 2019! Or, for a more elevated flair, go with the Hungarian Bulls Blood!

If You Liked This, Try –

Finals Girls by Riley Sager

My Heart Is A Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix