Home » Posts tagged "slasher movies"

Book Review: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

 

The final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Berkley, 2021

ISBN-13: 9780593201237

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, Audible audiobook Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

 

 

The Final Girl is the lone survivor of horror movies. She fought valiantly, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends who were each gruesomely dispatched by the killer. But after the truck drives away, the sirens fade, and the credits roll, what happens to our heroine, other than the potential for franchise sequels? We find out in Hendrix’s new novel, The Final Girl Support Group.

Hendrix, as with We Sold Our Souls and The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, displays an uncanny ability to write complex women. Combining this with the concept of the Final Girl works quite well. Twenty-two years ago, Lynnette Tarkington survived a harrowing massacre. For more than a decade, Lynette and other women meet in the Final Girl Support Group led by their therapist, Dr. Carol Elliot. Lynette keeps herself locked safely in her home with her best friend, a houseplant named Fine. She has no identification paperwork or ID, no social life, and keeps her head on a swivel when she does gather up her strength to go outside, usually to the support group. In the support group, we meet Adrienne Butler, the first Final Girl; Dani Shipman, who along with her partner Michelle owns a rescue ranch for abused and abandoned horses; Heather DeLuca, whose life has gone off the rails with bad decisions and jail time; Julia Campbell, the talkative and angry paralyzed survivor of her own story; and Marilyn Torres, the wealthy wife of a CEO, who is a recovering alcoholic and activist in the community. When one of the women doesn’t show up for their regular meeting, Lynnette’s paranoia kicks in full-bore. Someone knows about the Final Girl Support Group and wants them all to suffer, and then die. The suspect knows where they live and congregate, and what they do. It comes to light that someone in the group has written a tell-all book about the women in the group. Who betrayed the Final Girl Support Group? Lynette sets out to find the killer and expose the truth.

There is so much going on in this book, I had a hard time putting it down. If you like the slasher subgenre and have ever wondered what happened when the Final Girl’s story ended, pick up this book. Interspersed throughout the book are articles and reports about the Final Girls, which add that extra touch to each character. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: violence, gore, body horror, descriptions of torture

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Monster Movie Month: Friday the 13th

I’m guessing that since it’s Monster Movie Month and today happens to be Friday the 13th that you might wonder if I’m going to write about the subgenre everyone thinks about when the topic of horror movies comes up- slasher movies. Actually, I’m not that good at planning ahead, but when I realized today was Friday the 13th, I thought I should probably come up with something to say. Certainly, they were coming out in droves as I was growing up. But, honestly, this is a genre that I really don’t enjoy all that much, and outside of the first few Nightmare on Elm Street movies and a few of the more self-referential movies of the 90s and beyond, I haven’t seen the movies and don’t plan to.

It’s kind of hard to write about or even talk about horror movies without knowing the tropes, though. The plots and characters are so predictable that the denizens of the Shocklines horror community forum even compiled a horror movie survival guide... so predictable that moviemakers and can make fun of them and manipulate them (and movie watchers will enjoy it) in such films as the recently released movie The Cabin in the Woods (reviewed here, and accompanied by a great readers advisory one-sheet created by reviewer Benjamin Franz)

TVtropes.com provides a nice summary (with links) of the tropes of the slasher movie here. You can scroll down the page there to find a partial list of slasher movies. Along with Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th is considered an iconic film in the slasher genre, and the trope codifier.

If you’d rather try out a book in honor of the movie of the day, you can visit our page of reviews on Human Horror and Psychological Terror. Note that books in this genre are not for the faint of heart- they can be graphic, brutal, and gory, but much of the time they’re also psychological in nature, which makes them a different kind of creature.

Whatever your plans, may your day be a lucky one!