[Review] The Final Girl Support Group
The Final Girl Support Group
Author: Grady Hendrix
Berkley Books
3.7/5.0 Stars
The Final Girl Support Group is written in the first person and has, as the protagonist, you guessed it, a Final Girl named Lynette. Those familiar with the slasher sub-genre will know precisely what makes up such a character, but for those who are not here’s the simplest definition: a Final Girl is a woman who, usually during her teen years, goes to the trauma of not only barely escaping death but also seeing several of her friends and/or family murdered by a psychotic killer. Some argue that, in order to be a true Final Girl, the individual must murder their attacker and must have been attacked on more than one occasion, in other words, they need to have a “sequel.”
The twist of Hendrix’s approach to the slasher is that the book focuses on what happened to those women after they achieved their Final Girl status. He shows the reader how their adult lives were shaped by what had happened to them. As expected, all of them, deeply traumatized and that’s why they all ended up joining the Final Girl Support Group, accompanied by a psychologist, called Dr Carol, while they discuss how they are still affected by their past. The group comprises six women and their backstories/killers mimic those of the Final Girls presented in slashers: Adrienne’s links to Friday the 13th (2009), Julia’s to Scream (1996), Dani’s to Halloween (1978), Marilynn’s to Texas’ Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and Lynnete’s to the lesser-known Black Christmas (1974). I’m sure that the story of the sixth woman, Heather DeLucca, also follows another slasher movie. However, I could not identify which one since I’m not this sub genre’s greatest fan.
As I’ve said, the plot is quite interesting, and it draws the reader in and makes you want to keep reading in order to find out who is behind it all. The pace is fast, which contributes to a frenzied atmosphere all throughout the novel, however, all of that is overshadowed by the stiff dialogue and how unpleasant most of the characters are. I’m not sure whether Hendrix intentionally constructed them to be unlikable, but even if that was the case, the execution fell short, and it backfired. At no point during the narrative was I worried about what would happen to any of them, and that was because everyone was incredibly self-centered or wasn’t featured enough for me to develop a connection with them. Perhaps if the book was written in the third person, rather than the first, Lynette’s personality wouldn’t influence the story so much and the reader could see the other characters with unbiased eyes.
By far, my favorite thing about this novel is the snippets we get of character’s diary entries, subreddit posts, police reports, therapy sessions’ notes, letters, reviews of the movies that were inspired by the protagonists’ attacks, and even of a nonfiction book written by one character. They add to the feeling of immersion and give the impression that it was shifting between fiction and nonfiction, even though all the books and movies quoted/mentioned in those snippets are Hendrix’s creations. I wanted to read the rest of those fake tie-ins more than the actual story, especially the one written by Chrissy, who is the shunned Final Girl and a heavily under used character that had the potential to bring much more complexity to the story.
One of Hendrix’s trademarks is having a core message that he tries to convey during his books, and the main message is best represented by one of the few good lines said by Lynette: “You’re getting very mystical with people’s lives… These aren’t abstract ideas; they were actual human beings”. A risk we take consuming so many horror movies and books, especially now with the surge in popularity of true crime media, is reducing the victims to mere dead bodies and ignoring the fact that they are, above all, people. Yes, even though many of them are not real, it bodes well to remember that once we stop empathizing with suffering, whether or not it be fictional, we enter a dangerous path.
Marina Garrido.
