Safety In Numbers

I don’t think I have to explain to anyone at this point that I like slasher flicks. I’ve been covering them on this site for years practically since the day I relaunched it back in 2018. I enjoy the genre, both the good and the bad films, and I’ve certainly spent more than my fair share of time discussing all the films in the genre that I can find. As such, when I heard about a book about slasher heroines, a whole group of final girls coming together, I felt like I had to read it. Not just for the site, mind you, but just for me.

The novel, written by Grady Hendrix, was not only about final girls but their recovery after being attacked. It’s an interesting angle since, generally, we don’t tend to follow final girls after their initial attack. Sure, the ScreamWhat started as a meta-commentary on slasher media became just another slasher series in its own right, the Scream series then reinvented itself as a meta-commentary on meta-commentary. series is functionally all about Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, and we did get a short character arc for Alice Johnson in the fourth and fifth Nightmare on Elm StreetThe brain-child of director Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street was his answer to the glut of Slasher films that were populating the multiplex. His movie featured an immortal character, Freedy, with a powerset like none other, reshaping the expectations for Slasher movies to come. films, but generally final girls are discarded after they’ve survived their films, more often than not allowed to go off and live their lives without a slasher coming for them again.

This book, though, looks at what would happen to these girls after surviving these kinds of traumatic events. Specifically the girls in question – Lynnette (Silent Night, Deadly Night), Marylin (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Dani (HalloweenThe franchise that both set the standard for Slasher horror and, at the same time, defied every convention it created, Halloween has seen multiple time lines and reboots in its history, but one thing has remained: Michael Myers, the Shape that stalks Haddonfield.), Julia (Scream), and Heather (A Nightmare on Elm Street), are all victims of repeat attacks, each suffering through two encounters with men wanting to kill them. Looking at their stories, and what they went through to survive, gives the characters much needed colors while also setting real stakes for the book. Plus it’s interesting to read about them and try to figure out what film series they’re from and how their versions in the book align with the main characters we know from the movies (since names and faces are changed here to avoid copyright issues).

Lynnette is our main character and she’s also, really, the one that’s the most fucked up. She and the other girls all meet up in a monthly support group, led by Dr. Carol, to help them process their lives after their various attacks. While it seems like some ladies have moved on better than others (Adrienne, who misses their monthly meeting, bought the camp where she was attacked and has gone on to be a successful counselor as well as film producers, and Marilynn has married into being a rich socialite), they all keep showing up to support each other. Or, at least, support Lynnette.

While the other girls all killed their killers, getting a kind of catharsis in the process, Lynnette never did. She was attacked by Ricky, a boy that was obsessed with her, on Christmas, leading to the deaths of the rest of her family members, and then the next year she was attacked by his brother, leading to the deaths of her foster family members, and each time she was saved by cops who killed the boys. Ever since, Lynnette has been looking over her shoulders, waiting for the next attack. And then, when it comes, the other ladies don’t really believe her. It’s up to Lynnette to figure out what’s going on, who is after her, and if, somehow, someone is trying to kill all the remaining final girls in a bid to make some kind of screwed up statement.

The Final Girls Support Group is a twisty book that doesn’t always quite nail what it’s going for. It’s told from the perspective of Lynnette so, at times, it struggles with her as an unreliable narrator. She talks about herself, her past, the past of all her friends, and things that have happened in snips and snatches scattered through the book. It’s, at times, like a stream of conscious narrative that Lynnette tells herself while she’s running from whoever is after her. She’s a fleeing animal, so the spottiness of the narrative happens because she can only really dictate to us either as events occur (for the action) or when she has a moment to breathe (for backstory), leading to a story that isn’t always cohesive, narratively.

The backstories for the other finals girls are a good example. As Lynnette is on the run, early on, she pauses in her breathless escape attempts to tell us about each of the other girls. While the backstories are useful, if for no other reason than so we can tell which girl is from which franchise, when they happen it feels like they stop the narrative dead for a few moments. We need to know that Adrienne runs Camp Red Lake (Friday the 13thOne of the most famous Slasher film franchises, the Friday the 13th series saw multiple twists and turn before finally settling on the formula everyone knows and loves: Jason Voorhees killing campers 'round Camp Crystal Lake., of course), but we don’t learn about Adrienne’s past, the film series she produced based on her story, or how she bought the camp organically. Lynnette has to stop telling us about what’s going on to narratively info dump about Adrienne, and it feels abrupt and out of place. Each girl gets the same treatment, and the only time it feels natural is when Lynnette herself is trapped somewhere, can’t leave, and has just had a massive revelation about her own past that requires her to look back and think about all she experienced. It just feels off.

With that said, much of the rest of the narrative does work. I like how each of the characters is more than just their backstory. Hendrix thought about all the ways these ladies would have struggled after their repeat attacks and how it would change them. He put the effort in to make them feel like real people on their own paths, looking for ways to move forward in their lives, and it really helps them to feel like vital necessary parts of the narrative. Unlike in most slashers, these ladies aren’t cookie-cutter stand-ins.

Following Lynnette also means we have a character that needs to grow and evolve. She starts off effectively living like a hollow person, barely doing more than hiding in her (armored) apartment between trips out to her support group. Her life has been narrowed down to a tiny sliver, and she can’t seem to move beyond to finally be free. The new attacks force her out of her comfort zone, and it lets her finally find her growth, her change, and, eventually, her closure. By being the most fucked up person in the group, Lynnette has the most growth she can do, which makes her far more interesting.

And the parodies of the various films are great. While the book isn’t a comedy (at least, I didn’t find it particularly funny, despite what the book’s cover stated) it does a good job of playing with the slasher genre and creating pretty good homages for each of the series its lampooning. I liked reading the stories of the women and matching them up against the films I’d seen so I could think about what was the same and what was changed. It was a fun game to play while reading, and it made me feel “in the know” since I’d seen so many of these films and got the references. I felt like Captain AmericaCreated by Simon and Kirby in 1941, Captain America was a super soldier created to fight Germany and the evil HYDRA. Then he was lost in the ice, only to be found and reborn decades later as the great symbol of the USA. going, “I got that reference.”

And then the final act comes in and it changes a lot of what we thought we knew and where we thought the book was going. I don’t want to spoil any of it (as I feel like I’ve already spoiled a lot) but it definitely takes a hard left turn that makes you sit up and go, “what just happened?” It’s a twist I didn’t see coming, leading to a wild last act that I really enjoyed. It makes for a propulsive read, start to finish, that I find myself thinking back on over and over since I finished reading the book.

While I don’t think The Final Girls Support Group is perfect, it is still really great. The few criticisms I had with the novel don’t take away from the fact that it is, overall, a very fun, interesting, and active read. Taking all these survivors and putting them into a world where all their stories occurred creates an interesting story that you normally wouldn’t find in the genre. And it rewards anyone that really likes slasher films, like me. It’s probably not for everyone, but if you love the genre than this novel is one I’m sure you’ll enjoy.