SLEAZE FEATURE: 'THE FINAL GIRLS SUPPORT GROUP' (2021)

Haven’t consumed an entire novel in one sitting since before I became a dad. Oof, 4am bedtimes huuuurt in my dotage.

The new hotness in horror circles is Grady Hendrix’s latest, having been scooped up by HBO Max days after publication. Though this is the first of his fiction I’ve read, Hendrix earned my eternal adoration with 2017’s Paperbacks From Hell, a retrospective of ‘70s-‘80s terror-tomes of the kind B. Dalton stashed on waist-high wire racks at the backs of their stores out of embarrassment. As a weenie kid who gawked at all the garish covers (soooooo many skeletons!) and furtively scanned the back synopses while Ma browsed romances aisles away, Hendrix gets me. He’s got The Goods, y’all—follow his blog!

I Ate 'Em Up
(And They Rotted My Mind)

The Final Girl Support Group's concept is equally elegant and sublime: assorted holiday slaughters, power tool massacres, tree-street nightmares, and campground bloodbaths actually transpired, and the resulting Hollywood adaptations made the femmes finál starlet sensations and tabloid flotsam. The masked murderers (who, Scooby-Doo-style, are just loons instead of supernatural entities) have rabid fanbases, too, and those devotees are often worse than their idols.

The Final Girls, each in different life places (in all senses of the concept), meet monthly in secret for therapy and frenemyship. But someone finds out they’re regularly in the same room at the same time, and soon the body count climbs again….

Being told in first-person present-tense, TFGSG is a rocket of a read perfect for airports and beaches. The narrator is sympathetic and deep, yet just the perfect amount of irritating (due to her horrific trauma—seriously, it’s grodtastic) that, in keeping with the cinematic groove, you wanna yell at her from the audience. Her fellow gals are unique and distinct while still capturing traditional FG essence. The grue-dunnit mystery is captivating with plenty of twists and turns that equally lean into tropes *and* subvert them.

But the novel is more—far, far more—than a slavish paean to slasher flicks. It’s a meditation on franchises / sequels; on toxic fandom; on the True Crime phenom; on mass media; on exploitation (as a practice and an artistic style); on incels and MRAs and masculinity; on the assorted -isms ingrained in Horror itself. It’s a deconstruction and reconfiguring in the same fashion as Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon. Great stuff.

There's A Comic Book Se- / Prequel, Too!

Easter eggs abound for the Fangoria set, but don’t detract. Insufferable Ready Player One jackoffery, there ain’t.

"You Mean DEADY SLAYER ONE!!!
YEEHEEHEEHAAHAAHAW!!!"

If I have one complaint, it’s that there is serious tonal rollercoastering. But I can’t decide if a) it’s intentional, again in keeping with genre, b) a bug or a feature, and / or c) simply the consequence of a bleary reader gobbling it all in one sitting like too many Raisinets®️ at a midnight movie marathon. (Oh! If I have a minuscule quasi-complaint, it’s that I kinda-sorta immediately figured out the villain—I got the right answer, but via the wrong path—yet there blessedly was way more behind the machinations than surmised. And, truly, it’s ultimately my fault for consuming so much box office bloodshed.)

Recommended for those that like a thrilling yarn, but extra-mega-turbo recommended… IN 3-D!!! for horror dorks and cinephiles. There’s a legit something for every reader, no matter yer druthers.

Final Score:  Four-point-five racks o' antlers outta five.