The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £8.99 paperback £4.68 Kindle eBook

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who’s left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?

Lynnette Tarkington survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she’s not alone. For more than a decade she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette’s worst fears are realized―someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.

The idea of watching people killed for fun sounds like something we may expect from Roman Colosseums but many a cinema trip for many years sees hundreds of people lapping up the death of the innocent in the form of the slasher films. The inventive deaths, the compelling villain and that mix of terror and desire to witness these events is addictive - I’ve seen a few over the years. One element that evolved out of the genre is the idea of the final girl – the one who survives. As many variations on a theme evolved as with any sub-genre rules about this character became established and criticism explores what this unusual role means to us. As with all stories there are all sorts of messages about being human and a woman in a dangerous world can come across. In Grady Hendrix’s interesting horror novel The Final Girl’s Support Group this character gets a further re-appraisal.

Lynette is one of the most infamous group of survivors in the world. The Final Girls the survivors of various nations and bloody crimes for whom their tormentors in some way never gave up.  These events inspired many a successful long-running film franchise. But the girls just faded away…except for the girls themselves who lived their traumatic afterlives; coping with huge physical and mental scars they were isolated and alone. But one group have led to a monthly therapy group which Lynette has regularly attended under the kindly gaze of Doctor Carol. But the group rarely bonds; often suspects one another of sabotaging each other and things are looking like they’ve ran out of road. Then the first ever final girl is killed and soon after many others are under attack. Lynnete is on the run, but someone knows this group very very well and clearly a new deadly game has begun.

This is a really interesting story exploring this area of horror that can be both an expression of feminist rebellion and also a genre that happily treats violence and the deaths of women as entertainment. Hendrix although doesn’t use real movie franchises uses one you can guess pretty easily and links parallels to how many slasher films take some inspiration from true crime. Interestingly Hendrix empowers the women by courts awarding them all the production rights and yet money does not make the women happy. Lynette is very much agoraphobic and has no life beyond planning escape roots. Others have drug addictions, alcoholism and many more daily challenges.

With the violent death of one of the group, we get very much a chase story and Lynnete is our main character telling us her story in real time. Rather than a pure slasher film this is in more ways a thriller with aspects of horror as Lynette finds herself on the run and under suspicion. One challenge is that each woman stands alone here, and Lynette is many ways has not helped with her actions to gain trust. We also start to see the secrets each woman has held back from the therapy group finally revealed. Lots of chases, shootings and betrayals await and its very well paved with revelations slowly unveiled that make us start to understand Lynette and rot for her to get through this new horror.

At the same time my one observation is that I didn’t think Hendrix did anything particularly new in their analysis of the dilemma of the Final Girl. It can be both a badge of honour and something troubling about how we use women for entertainment. Its delivered well and does highlight the contradictions but while interesting to see what happens next to them it ultimately still has the same beats as the slasher films it links to. Perhaps a little more focus on the therapy aspects themselves would have been useful here but that felt more a set-up than an actual new element.

The Final Girls Support Group is very enjoyable horror. It makes its case and while none of it may be too surprising to you it still has a compelling main characters and storyline that at the very least will remind us of this role’s unusual history. But part of me wonders if we are now at a time this road bar reheated remakes may finally be itself finally going back to the grave it came from. An interesting read to look out for.