The Final Girl Support Group is a feminist romp through classic horror tropes

Author Grady Hendrix follows up his bestselling novel The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires with an equally thrilling feminist reimagining of another classic genre staple in The Final Girl Support Group, a story that (excuse the pun) slashes through many of the staid tropes we’ve come to expect in horror stories.

The title refers to a Los Angeles-based therapy group for “final girls” – women who survived the sort of brutal massacres and serial killer rampages that launched a cottage industry of cinema in the 1980s and 90s. These women have all handled the pressure of survival differently – some have turned to drugs, others to charity work. Lynnette Tarkington, the survivor of the infamous Silent Night Slayings of 1988, has become a paranoid recluse, afraid to engage with the world outside her (heavily locked and guarded) door.

But when one of the group is murdered decades after she escaped her assailant, Lynette is convinced that someone is trying to orchestrate a grand finale – one in which no final girls escape.

The story works on its own as a twisty murder mystery – who’s hunting these women? A dangerous stalker? A deranged fan of the deadly killers who have been lionized for their ability to hurt others – particularly women and girls? Just a regular old homicidal maniac who wants his own chance at immortality? But it’s at its best as a commentary on the horror genre, a story that subverts many of the familiar tropes that will be second nature to slasher fans and one which gives women back the power that these franchises so often take away.

The main characters are all loosely based on the final girls from famous horror franchises – Scream, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Friday the 13th – each with their own lingering traumas and fears to cope with. Hendrix is remarkably upfront about how damaged these women are, and how the horror they survived is something that’s still ongoing for them in a way that people who want the neat bow of a closing credits sequence often ignore.

Lynette, Dani, Heather, Marilyn, and Julia have difficult relationships between and among one another, some prickly, some loyal, and some downright rude. But their shared understanding of the absolute worst of human nature binds them together in ways that are hard to explain but are nevertheless deeply emotionally true.

These women may be final girls, but none of them are weak and The Final Girl Support Group gives each of them the chance to both intellectually and physically subvert the damsel in distress trope that so frequently pervades slasher films. Or, as Scream once famously put it: “It’s always some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act who’s always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. It’s insulting.” That is not these women.

Instead, these women are fighters – both in the literal and metaphorical sense. Many of them are skilled fighters or trained markswomen, and they’ve all been in the sort of life or death situations that have taught them how to be aware of their surroundings in ways and use them to survive terrible things. And they all know one thing for sure – that you never leave your sisters behind.

The Final Girl Support Group is also unabashedly feminist, and in a genre that often both sees and depicts women as little more than objects meant to live and die for the pleasure of the male gaze, this feels like a breath of fresh air. The women at the center of this story aren’t perfect, often aren’t even likable, but they’re claiming control of their own stories – and there’s plenty of reason to celebrate that.

The Final Girl Support Group is available now. Let us know if you’re planning to give it a look.