Book Review: The Final Girl Support Group
“Ever wonder what happens to those final girls? After the cops eliminate them as suspects, after the press releases their brace-faced, pizza-cheeked, bad-hair-day class photos that inevitably get included on the cover of the true-crime book? After the candlelight vigils and the moments of silence, after someone plants the memorial shrubs?
I know what happens to those girls.”
I have been impatiently waiting to read The Final Girl Support Group since it came out in July of this year. I am outrageously fascinated with the Final Girl construct, and I was instantly ecstatic to unravel a world where Final Girls have not only formed a support group but an unknown villain is now picking off that support group.
A book about a band of sister Final Girls absolutely wrecking a Big Bad, i.e., killer (pun most definitely intended) creative fight scenes, epic chases, sophisticated villains, and just general girl-power-fueled bad-assery.
Reality.
Let’s be honest. A Final Girl outside of a scripted fantasy world would be positively mangled; physically, mentally, and emotionally. She would be utterly dysfunctional, damaged, and trying to put her life back together in whatever way she could. Those are the Final Girls that Grady Hendrix wrote about.
Where I was hoping for a sisterhood forged in blood, I got an actual support group with six fundamentally different women, coping in their own ways, acting selfishly and illogically. It seemed like they hated each other for most of the book, and sometimes I hated them, too. These women whined, they fought, and on the whole, acted as they might if they were real women who had been through absolute hell.
Where I wanted a complex, brilliant, original Bad Guy, I got a more realistic version. This villain would be more at home on tonight’s evening news than running across the screen of a classic horror film.
SPOILER ALERT: It is a spoiled little mama’s boy misogynist with a machine gun.
Looking at the book for how it was written and not through the lens of what I wanted it to be, it is a fine book. It is decently constructed, with a twist that I did not see coming, and a healthy dose of homage to some of the best slasher movies of all time. And while they did get under my skin, the Final Girls in this story have their moments of tenderness, humor, and friendship that mostly redeem their more antagonizing qualities.
I loved how Hendrix, through “traitor” Final Girl, Chrissy, dissected the Final Girl paradigm itself in an almost scholarly approach. Through dialogue with Chrissy and the inner thoughts of the main character, Lynette, the book considers the Final Girl/Monster conflict as a core depiction of the leading forces in the universe; life/death, creation/destruction. I came away from these scenes even more fascinated with the Final Girl archetype, almost itching to write a term paper on the subject. It was a fantastic undercurrent to address the matter at hand: “why Final Girls?” and “what do they mean to us?” without detracting from the overarching plot. Impressively, the conversation is largely philosophical and deals with a bigger overall concept than the central conflict itself while still blending with the tone of the rest of the book.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the feminist-leaning social commentary that made its way into the book. Without being too heavy-handed, it calls the reader’s attention to some of the weightier considerations of the entire Final Girl idea. When a male character dies, it’s because he’s done something wrong; stepped on a twig, gone down into the creepy basement, etc. However, the Final Girl/Slasher universe mostly revolves around one female who is typically in the wrong place at the wrong time and therefore doggedly hunted, maimed, and nearly killed. Why is this? Why is this such an easily acceptable chain of events? It’s a concept I hadn’t considered before, and I respect a book that begs contemplation without forcing it.
One of the main drawbacks keeping this book from being a new favorite is the disjointed storylines that comprise the book’s history and context. Each of the featured Final Girls is based on one from classic slasher movies, which I whole-heartedly loved, but how the character history presents is hard to follow. The backstories of each girl are told in out-of-order snippets, little moments here and there, as told by a paranoid, somewhat unreliable narrator. I found piecing these stories together quite tricky, and I imagine it would be exponentially more challenging to make sense of if the reader is unfamiliar with the films that are being referenced.
The main character herself deals with her dark past by shutting herself off, going to great lengths to conceal and protect herself from the outside world. She has no life; she has no aspirations; she is only committed to staying alive. She is hyper-paranoid and in constant inner turmoil, and at some point, being in her head gets tiresome. I can’t imagine living like her; I could barely read about living like her, in her brain, in her emotionally stunted thoughts. I understand what Hendrix did. It makes sense that this is her particular response to the major events she has survived, but it was sometimes exhausting to be inside her head.
Overall, I thought this was an okay book. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I respect what it is. I thoroughly enjoyed some parts of it but could have lived without others. By the end of it, I was glad I read it, and though I was still confused over a couple of things, I found that I was satisfied with the way things wrapped up. It was a great way to kick off October and might just be the perfect book for slasher movie fans, or really anyone, who want to see Final Girls in a new light.
In any case, that cover? 10/10.
Until next time…
